Cordiform
by Annie Christ
Summary: There's something hollowing about growing up in a pre-built world and learning how to become your own person. A story about the conquests through mental illness, pretending to be someone you're not and relying on yourself when there is no one else there to soften the blow of becoming an adult.
1. Peter Pan

**_Chapter One: Peter Pan_**

Whenever the cleaning lady scoured his bathroom, Roxas believed it was his responsibility to take a gander at her bulbous backside while she scrubbed beneath the rim of his toilet bowl. The relevance of her age being the equivalent to his own mother's didn't deter him in the least since the ogling wasn't associated with hormonal propensity. It was because anytime this woman bent over her ass earned its own zip code, and the startling sight was enough to make the seventeen year old pause and wonder who on earth could be the Christopher Columbus to her continent-like derrière. She had four children, so he knew _someone _had taken on that unholy task multiple times. Roxas occasionally attempted to estimate how many men had been lost at sea. Had Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain paid this gallant explorer and his seaman to take on the Indies? Were many lives swept off the poop deck and into irate waves? Were classless, sexual puns really all that humorous? Could Roxas get anymore his age? Honestly, he liked to think there was wiggle room but that parole was pending.

Answers were nowhere to be found in the immediate now, which was why after Roxas got an eyeful of spandex and panty line, he went on with his day knowing full well his eyes would dart back the moment she returned the next week to take a feather duster to the bottom shelf of his bookcase. By the time he had trudged into the kitchen, his mom was struggling to uncork a bottle of wine and gabbing to her fellow housewife on the phone. He had forgotten about the cleaning lady's ass and was more focused on what there was to eat in the house than anything else pertaining to the universe. The first stop was always the cabinets holding cereal with enough sugar to initiate diabetes all while claiming to contain seventeen vitamins and minerals. Roxas contemplated every box, but he shut the cabinet and went to the refrigerator. The fridge was a wasteland meant solely for their chef and milk for his cereal. Going there always proved fruitless, but every morning he went with the kind of false hope reserved for the holocaust. After several minutes of defeat, Roxas began a pattern of heading to the cabinets, inspecting, stepping over to the fridge, inspecting, and then rinsing and repeating.

"Roxas, quit pacing. You're giving Mommy a headache." Those were the first words Roxas was greeted by, but instead of listening, he continued with what he had been doing. He was close to some kind of food. He could feel it. The food fairies were near, and his mother was whore, so nothing she said mattered.

"His father gave me herpes. I'm going to have to tell the garden boy and his brother." And that was the reason his mom was opening the wine a couple hours earlier than normal. "And then it's going to get out. I can't handle the stress. I'm sure those two fuck plenty of women with rotten cunts. They could blame it on someone else."

Roxas made an offended face at the Irishman on his chosen box of cereal and decided he hadn't been that hungry anyway.

* * *

He went to a private school along the shoreline with a knot of friends that were equally as privileged as him. The only difference between Roxas and his companions was he acknowledged they had more money than the public school attending youth downtown, and they didn't. In their minds, there was nothing beyond the cluster of designer clad individuals that streamed into the educational institution accented with architecture from the Victorian era and creeping vines that had long since wormed their way into crumbling brick. There were private universities with cheaper tuition than his high school, and Roxas occasionally wondered if attending was solely a declaration for his parents' ego because he had never asked to go. It had simply been expected of him and his father's bank account.

Olette pushed a fallen tress behind her ear and stared at Roxas with narrowed eyes. She was scrutinizing, and Roxas could smell her hesitant need to enunciate curiosity. She did this a lot, which was why he continued to stare at his tuna pasta salad as if the noodles had just told him the secrets of the universe, and little did everyone else know the Holy Grail was nestled beneath a portable toilet in Elyria, Nebraska. That being said, his avoidance was futile. This was the girl that could smell a problem a hundred miles away, and if he didn't blatantly ignore her, then she would jump down his throat without even having the courtesy to ease into an interrogation. Blatantly ignoring Olette was beyond the bounds of possibility, but to him it was worth a shot.

"Roxas," she began as the blond started to shovel food into his mouth so talking would become unmanageable. "How are you?"

"You sound like a therapist." Hayner intervened in an attempt to save his friend from a kind of personal hell only Olette knew how to inflict. "How are you doing, Roxas? Tell me about yourself, Roxas. Were you diddled as a child, Roxas? Do you feel like your mother loved you growing up, Roxas? Let me say your name after every sentence in an attempt to make it seem as if I'm seeking a personal connection with you, Roxas."

The way her body language deflated was the telltale sign she wasn't amused. "Can't a person just ask how someone's doing?"

"It's your inflection," Pence chimed in with a smile before burying his face into his drink. "Your ever pleasant inflection."

The foursome was settled around a circular lunch table in the school's courtyard. Winter was on the horizon, and the only reminisce of autumn was the pasty concoction of moisture and decaying leaves settled beneath their booted feet. Roxas wondered why the four of them had decided eating outside was a good idea. His nose was already dripping watery snot and he had seen tomatoes with less colorization than his nose, but he seemed to be the only one affected, so he didn't say anything. Roxas was never one for being the joy kill, but Hayner would also refer to him as 'bitch boy' for the rest of the school day if he expressed discomfort, and he wasn't particularly in the mood for that.

"I'm cool," Roxas finally muttered before reaching over to grab Pence's paper cup of hot chocolate. God, he couldn't feel his fucking face out there. "I didn't sleep much and then Mom was on the phone with someone this morning. I think Dad gave her herpes."

Olette's eyebrows shot to her hairline, and Hayner cackled. She waited for her friend to stop laughing before speaking. "Are you serious? Your dad has herpes?"

Hayner spoke for Roxas. "Don't be surprised. I mean, aside from producing music, his dad's life quest is to fuck as many women as possible. His mom's giblets have been a ticking time bomb since the first six months of marital bliss wore off."

"Yeah." Roxas shrugged as if he was everything but bothered when really he was on the brink of expelling the contents from his stomach all over the sushi Olette's mom had so carefully packed into her lunchbox. He might have laughed had he upchucked on her Philadelphia roll, and he was sure the situation would have been hilarious had it not been _his_ parents, but that was how these things always seemed to go. "It was bound to happen. I just didn't want to _know_ about it."

Pence stole back his hot chocolate. "Yo, how did you even find out?"

"She was just right there in the kitchen." Roxas shrugged before throwing up his hands in surrender. "She was tearing into the wine at eight this morning, and while I'm trying to figure out if I want oatmeal or cereal, she announces it. Some people shouldn't have kids. Half the time I feel like a statement piece. There's Roxas. We have a _son_ because that's relevant here in the twenty-first century United States where the divine right exists amongst our egos."

"That's sort of gross." Olette stuck out her tongue, childish in her own right. "Your dad should feel like an asshole."

"He probably doesn't _care_," Roxas said with a straight face. "You know how my dad is."

"True, and my parents are kind of the same. It'd be too hard for them to get a divorce because of their finances even though they're miserable. My mom would try to clean Dad's bank account, and he would rather have people talk about his scandalous relationships with younger women than lose an iota of money."

"Same." Hayner piped up and Pence raised a finger to third the statement.

"But really." Olette's doe eyes locked onto Roxas'. "Are you okay?"

"I mean…" He wondered if he was. _Not really_. "Who doesn't this happen to?"

* * *

His fingernails were scraping along the orange railing to a rusting bridge when he decided his parents had conditioned him to be one of the most thorough liars he ever had the misfortune of meeting. Roxas did his best to console his aching sense of self-worth with rampant, pick me up pep talks better left at seminars intended for hopeless forty year olds, but he ended up gnawing strips of skin off his bottom lip in response. Dragging his teeth along the already scabbed over Cupid's bow until he made himself wince, it wasn't until Roxas tasted iron and contemplated swallowing his own teeth and tongue did he decide it was time to stop. Sometimes, he romanticized obliterating his own face until his jaw was nothing but bone and skin confetti floating downward like decorations for a child's birthday party because then the lying would stop. That would shut his mouth for good, and his existence would no longer be smoothly articulated sentences containing nothing but feculent cud and all the worthless fucks he had been trained to give. God, he didn't want to care. He just didn't want to care.

His tongue smoothed along his slimy front teeth, and right as he imagined them gone with blown open nerve endings, he pushed a set of fingers through his hair and stifled the urge to scream. His entire existence was built around perpetual containment, and he couldn't even give himself over to an emotional outburst while completely alone. The river coursing beneath the bridge he was standing on and the sky he periodically wished would crush him were the only two things keeping him company in that moment. That being said, even in complete solitude, hidden from his oppressive species, Roxas was at a loss with pricking eyes and burning guts.

"You know, kid. It's pretty hard to concentrate on killing myself with you standing over there making guinea pig noises."

Roxas made a strangled sound before turning around to see something he shouldn't have missed no matter how lost he had been in his adolescent mind. Standing on the rickety railing of the bridge was a man with the stupidest hair he had ever seen. Red porcupine spikes nearly dreaded from whatever kind of filth the stranger had rolled in and surreal peridot eye colorization, Roxas parted his lips as if to say something, but he choked on what he assumed were going to be words. Upon a more thorough inspection, he wondered if he was looking at some subhuman species because that olive skin was too smooth, those God-spun facial features were unnaturally symmetrical, and for the love of all that was holy, no one should have been able to make an elongated chin look so right.

"Keep staring like that." The husky voice was accompanied by the kind of smile implying he knew he was something to look at. "I might not take a running leap off this thing in the name of jadedness."

There were the fleeting couple of seconds where Roxas wondered if he should walk away because this person was standing on a rusted bridge telling him he was contemplating killing himself while wearing one of the most genuine smiles he had ever seen. There was something almost eerie about the situation that made him uncomfortable, and all those stranger danger warnings flashed before his eyes in a single sweeping montage of finalization.

"Are you mute?" Suddenly leaning against one of the unstable supports creating the arch of the bridge, the man began rapidly moving his hands in a cryptic code making Roxas arch an eyebrow. "Because I minored in American Sign Language, so we've got this."

"I'm not mute." Roxas startled himself with his own voice.

"Yeah." He stopped signing before putting on a smirk and looking Roxas over appraisingly. "I didn't think so. Plus, you probably would have done the dirty work for me and shoved me off this thing had you been able to understand anything I just told you."

"Why?" Roxas found himself looking at the other's hands. His fingers were too long. "What'd you say?"

"_Ha_!" He continued signing for a moment, which was really making Roxas nervous because he had seen construction paper with more spine than what this guy was standing on. "I'm sure you'd like to know."

"If you were going to kill yourself, then you would have already done it," he said, wondering where his sudden authority over the topic derived from, but he kept going. "You obviously don't want to die."

He dropped his hands, but his smile didn't vanish. "The fact that you're seemingly challenging me about whether or not I want to off myself probably doesn't say too much about you as a human being."

"I don't consider myself much of a humanist."

"See, that right there was about as precious as necrotizing fasciitis."

The familiarity this person spoke with was enough to make Roxas purse his lips, but his defense mechanisms were weak. "I'm not trying to be cute."

"The cutest people never are."

Roxas opened his mouth with all the intentions in the world of retorting, but he was interrupted.

"So, war, gore and bloodshed for that dainty baby face? Your freckles haven't even faded yet and you're hooked into philosophy. That's impressive in a sad kind of way. When I was thirteen, I was still fascinated by the T and A apparatus." The man grasped onto the arching bar and planted a boot firmly down onto his feeble foot support before leaning backwards over frothy rapids. Roxas sucked in a sharp breath when the stranger was only supporting himself with the grasp of three fingers, and the second Roxas reacted, the redhead let out a barking laugh and yanked himself forward. Eyes burning with alertness as he adopted a smug smile, he regained his stability. "How about you tell this dying man your name?"

"Roxas Eames and I'm not thirteen. I'm seventeen." He paused, but begrudgingly. "Not that it matters since you're on your deathbed, but you?"

Another laugh and Roxas wondered if the ginger was trying to jab his way beneath his skin. That laugh was like a bot-fly. "Axel Diamond, and Eames as in the soul sucking factory uptown?"

"What kind of last name is Diamond?"

By then he was pressing his cheek against the bar Roxas wished he'd use to push himself onto solid ground. "A damn good one. The one good thing my old man did was give me that name."

"It sounds like something you'd see headlining a burlesque show."

"You know, I thought it was a little more drag myself, but burlesque works, too."

"Why not burlesque in drag?"

Axel sucked in air through clenched teeth, seemingly distraught. "Damn, I wish I had the shoulders for it, but you're deflecting, kid. You look like your last name would be Eames. That Ralph Lauren, V-neck, sweater is totes for sure this season with a pinch of sophisticated masculinity that's strong enough to give me nocturnal emissions at twenty-three. Tell me your daddy's the motherfucker that's worked all of my friends to the ground for minimum wage. It'll make this moment poignant. I will die knowing my last conversation was with the flyblown spawn of Beelzebub himself, and I will die happy."

Roxas narrowed his eyes, but he wasn't about to defend his dad's factory with a straight face. He knew. "My dad owns it, yeah."

Axel let out a low whistle, superficially impressed. "No wonder you're not a humanist. You're probably a direct descendant of Machiavelli."

"I'm going to leave now." Roxas grumbled and turned as if to walk in the direction he had derived from. "Have fun dying!"

"You don't mean that!"

"I don't even know who you are!"

"Do people like you ever really _know_ anyone?"

Roxas stopped short and took a second to look over his shoulder. He was soaking in that verbal punch in the dick all while contemplating the outcome of humoring this person. That is, until he personally reiterated the fact that his life was hellishly mundane and Axel Diamond was a breath of fresh air in comparison to his generally lackluster existence. Gritting his teeth for a nanosecond, he stomped his pride like puke through a drain and turned completely back around with his pride wounded. His expression implied he found the situation trivial, but he wasn't about to walk away.

"Why do you want to kill yourself?"

"That was a bold icebreaker." Roxas exhaled in relief when Axel stepped off the rail and onto gravel that crunched beneath his shoes. The way he landed was feline-like, and Roxas was becoming more and more certain Axel was everything but human. "People lesson number one, Roxas. We don't immediately reveal our deepest, darkest secrets the second we meet someone new."

"I think you're an exception considering how I walked in on you about to kill yourself."

Axel gave that some thought before raising both hands in surrender and nodding. "Touché."

"Were you even _really_ thinking about killing yourself?"

"Has anyone ever told you you're _really_ insensitive?"

Roxas furrowed his eyebrows, and though he could have sworn he had something clever to say, his mind blanked. "Yes."

"Someone's honest and probably doesn't have very many friends." A corner of Axel's lips curled upwards as he approached Roxas and it was then he became aware of this person's incredible height. The top of Roxas' head would have been hard pressed to reach his pectorals, which left his Napoleon complex with panties twisted until they made a cat's cradle. There was nothing more threatening to him than another man taller than him, which essentially meant every other man in existence without a diagnosis. "You are _small_."

Roxas could have sworn his spine created a ninety degree angle. "Fuck you, man."

"See? Being on the other end of insensitivity is a royal bitch, isn't it?" Axel purposely leaned over before squishing his own face ultimately causing his voice to somewhat slur. "Should I buy you some crayons and coloring books to heal those wounds? They smell a bit _infected_."

"Get out of my face." Roxas stepped back before Axel could do as he asked. "You're obnoxious."

"Obnoxious comes in many forms, kiddo. You're pretty bad in your own right."

Without an explanation for where they were going, Axel picked up his feet and headed past Roxas who felt inclined to follow after him like an obedient dog. As they walked in silence, it was hideously awkward for Roxas who had expected Axel to continue on with his gabbing or at least have the decency to answer his question.

"Why were you all the way out here?" Axel suddenly broke the silence as he fished around in his back pocket. "What do you children do nowadays? Play with Tinker Toys and that strange Frisbee creation. Satan's work those frees-bees are. Back in my day we walked seventeen miles through the core of the earth and called it fun just to walk back barefoot."

Roxas' eyes were focused straight ahead as he tried not to laugh, but it was an internal war that made the Trojan one look like chess. "I was thinking."

"Thinking deep thinky thoughts that only ferment in pubertal little brains, I'm guessing. Don't tell me I'm off the beaten path here. I know I'm not."

"Are you going to mock me the entire time I talk?"

"Ah, that's sort of the goal because your age group takes itself _so_ seriously, and even if it wasn't the goal you'd think it was. I might as well stake _some _claim on your aggravation."

Roxas couldn't help but to prove Axel's point by rolling his eyes. "That's nice of you."

"I thought so, too." He exhaled in exaggerated belief before finally extracting a pack of cigarettes and a cheap, pink lighter. "I'm just happy we're on the same page!"

The blond took a moment to cross-examine Axel. Aside from the faintly freakish physical attributes, he was so strikingly normal in every other aspect Roxas had a hard time comprehending the collision of two worlds. In a sense, it was his subjective definition of obscene, and it was then he realized Axel was what his mother would refer to as a _ragamuffin_. The word had been the bane of his existence since he could take a piss on his own, and it was mainly because she said it so much. It wasn't the meaning or even the fact it sounded as if someone was referring to another person as a dumpy pastry made out of frayed towels, but the repetition of it sliding off the roof his mother's mouth made his skin crawl. To this day she still swept her hand over his hair and claimed he was a _ragamuffin _because his blond hair naturally grew out into an obnoxious cowlick he had long since accepted. Anytime she decided to refer to him as such, he recalled how she also enjoyed pointing a finger at the kids walking the streets of uptown and saying the word. She also wasn't afraid to call a homeless person one with biblical conviction. He sometimes wondered if she was trying to use it as a semi-homonym but failing without realization or if she was seriously trying to be that damn offensive. Either way, it made him livid.

"My friends and I all have cars, and we ride around and get baked while our parents fuck each other because they're as bored as the rest of us."

"That is some impressive truism." Axel was what Roxas referred to as merciless when the dull tone filtered through teeth. "Is that all you do?"

"I mean, yeah."

"Seventeen year olds with limitless credit cards and you do nothing but drive around and get high." Axel appeared genuinely defeated while lighting up. "I might as well turn around and take that running leap. My faith in my own species wanes by the second."

"Sorry for not having embarked on life changing quests at seventeen," he acridly murmured. "There's not much else to do, and in case you haven't noticed, things like the _Never Ending Story_ don't happen, and if they do, I didn't make the cut along the selective line of divine destiny."

"For the love of God," Axel smoothed a hand over his hair and was suddenly working his jaw, smoke expelling from his nostrils. "Tell me you have some kind of hobby. I mean, don't get me wrong. There's nothing abysmal about getting a little fucked up. I mean, I kind of endorse getting very fucked up, but that's a nonissue here. When I was totting around at your age, my friends and I were into everything we didn't need to be in."

Roxas disregarded the last part in favor of keeping his anger collected. "I skate sometimes. Like, skateboarding…"

Amused by the kid's faux-maturity, he smirked. "You're pretty trusting. I bet no one knows you're out here."

Some people were painfully perceptive in the kind of way that startled Roxas because he was hardwired to have more in common with a pile of rocks than the rest of mankind. He couldn't gather connotations, had minuscule experience dealing with sentiments, and at the end of the day, he was a glob of human flesh without connection to anything or anyone. The worst part was that he understood this, and out of the seven billion fucking people in the world, he couldn't seem to sync with a single person beyond the level of forced acquaintance. Sure, Pence, Olette, and especially Hayner all looked at him as though he was this part of their inseparable friendship pact, but they were so disposable. If he woke up the next morning and was told they had all died in a heinous car accident where their skulls had busted on asphalt like dropped eggs, Roxas would roll over. He would roll over onto his side and go back to sleep for the rest of the morning. Maybe he would sleep it off for a couple days, but by the third day he would be wondering who else would throw down with him when he was low on Ultimat or in need of some bud.

"That sounded threatening in the why-didn't-I-bring-my-mace kind of way."

"Hey," Axel gave Roxas the kind of wink that forced him to swallow spit. "You shadowed me. You could have kept your ass on that fucking bridge, kid. Whatever happens from here on out is your fault."

"That's an iota away from being glaringly politically incorrect."

"I'm going to give you some credit." Axel turned around with his hands shoved into his hoodie pocket, and he began walking backwards in front of Roxas. "For seventeen, you've got a quick brain. 'Course you haven't been hammered down by college yet, but I'm kind of impressed. When do you graduate?"

"This summer."

"Do you have a major in mind?" He stopped Roxas short. "If you say Philosophy I'll probably do you the favor of killing you in the woods and leaving you for the elements. You might as well not prolong the inevitability of your future with that degree."

"I haven't given it much thought. I didn't even think I'd make it to graduation."

"Wait a second." He could have sworn there was some semblance of compassion in those green eyes. "Hey, kid, when you were back at the bridge. What exactly were you thinking about?"

"You wouldn't tell me, so why should I tell you?"

That was when he realized had Axel not been about to do the very same, Roxas would have climbed over that rickety bar and thrown himself to the rushing water and staccato blades cleverly disguised as rocks. The thought of being able to run back and finish what he had subconsciously started made Roxas jolt, and suddenly, his joints were aching. Stepping forward initiated charley horses until tears pricked his eyes, and he was all at once aware of an inferno behind his sternum that could have put Dante's works on a children's shelf.

"You've got it cushy." Axel offered him a cigarette, but he declined. "It'll be easier to hide the bullshit."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Think about it this way," he began as he fell back into step beside the blond. "That _over_thinking thing you were doing back there? Cut it the fuck out. Stick to ignorant bliss because once your gears start turning they never stop. Once you figure the world out, you can't go back. You never want to figure the world out, Roxas. It's a bad place because it's lonely. Way too fucking lonely for a kid."

"I thought the world already was kind of lonely." Roxas had no idea why he was humoring the guy the way he was, but he couldn't stop. Maybe it was the tenor of his voice or how life was seemingly radiating from his irises. It didn't matter. Axel Diamond was one of those talkers that made him comfortable. "I'm a couple months shy of being an adult, so maybe I'm just premature on the whole reality thing."

"You're quite the dusty light bulb."

"Asshole," Roxas murmured.

"Hey, hey," he cut into the rash insult. "Don't take that the wrong way. You've got the right idea. You're in the right country. Hell, you're in the right region, even. Just need to," and he swiped his hands across one another with his cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth, "clean it up. That comes with age, though."

"You said you're twenty-three. You're not that much older than me."

"Five years makes an incredible difference." Axel planted a hand over his heart in mock meaningfulness. "If I can promise you anything it'll be that you will not be the same person five years from now. You will fuck, be fucked, die, be resurrected, snort blood from the grout of bathroom floors, sleep under tables, smoke crack, lie and say you didn't smoke crack, take a trip to China, get worms, drive your girlfriend to an abortion clinic, and sometimes, you'll make it to work on time, but that's not often. Luckily, you're charming and reputably endowed, so you're never fired."

"All of that?"

"Take everything I say the way people should take the Bible." Axel sucked smoke into his lungs and opened his mouth into an O-shape only to puff out an impressive ring. "I'm full of metaphors. It gets a little surreal otherwise. Well, except the endowed thing. That's never a metaphor."

"More like full of shit."

"That too on some days."

Realizing they were approaching the parking lot Roxas' car was settled in, he exhaled through his nose before yanking his phone out of his back pocket to check the time. Every week night he had to be home the exact same moment his dad came home in order to have a family dinner. Though his mom was usually drunk off her ass by that point, his dad was never focused on her enough to notice, and if he did notice, he clearly didn't care. Dinner conversations always revolved around Roxas' grades, Roxas' scholarship opportunities and Roxas' lack of facial hair. If he was a minute late his dad would be calling him in a spitting rage, and well, Roxas never could upset his parents. He needed gas money and an allowance.

"Got somewhere to be, huh?"

"Parents…"

"Word." Axel tossed his cigarette aside. "I'm out, kid. Nice meeting you, and all that jovial jazz. Maybe someday our paths will intersect again? Keep an eye on the bridges. I'm still pretty hell bent on flying."

"That's what you call it?" But his eyes suddenly grew wide, and as Axel turned to jog away, Roxas' mouth moved faster than his thoughts. "What if I want to get ahold of you?"

Tossing him a look over his shoulder, Axel was wearing an elusive smile that was faintly inquisitive. The redhead clearly found him amusing for wanting to know. "You've got my name. Names are a powerful thing, and you have resources. Look me up. If you want to find me you will."

With that unsatisfying answer trailing after him like fairy dust, Roxas watched Peter Pan himself disappear as he rounded the corner of poorly trimmed hedges.


	2. Tiger Lily

_Trigger Warnings: Suicidal tendencies/thoughts, implied eating disorder, generally shitty thought processes, slurs_

* * *

_**Chapter Two: Tiger Lily**_

Tangled blankets were clumped around him in what he commonly referred to as his nest when the red numerals to his digital clock clicked over to a two and a pair of zeros. Roxas' glassy eyes were heavy-lidded as another Feed the Children infomercial flickered in the gloss curving along his irises. As stimulating as starving adolescent children were, he couldn't concentrate on the screen for longer than ten minute intervals, and he continuously found himself pausing to glance out his bedroom window as if hoping for a sign from the constellations. He needed the universe to advise him on what to do with the sticky June night where air streaked down the walls of lungs like refrigerated maple syrup. There was no reason for him to be listless on a Saturday when he possessed the good fortune of a new Mercedes-Benz SLK-Class and more than a couple expendable thousands cushioned in his bank account. _You deserved it_, his dad had reassured while handing over a set of keys after his graduation dinner. The man had been earnest, and Roxas wished he could figure out why. His senior year had been a lethargic binge, and the bottles of Pyrat lining the top of his book shelf were a testament to this.

God answered, and his cell phone vibrated beneath his pillow pile. Without wondering who was texting him, Roxas slid his thumb along the touch screen to unveil the message predictably from Hayner.

"_My bitch, come to me in Uptown. Kegs and virgins anticipate your arrival."_

Uptown was taboo. This was solely because Roxas had been trained by his classist parents to avoid the hooligans surrounding the clustered neighborhoods adjacent the mediocre state school nestled there. The setup was commonplace to the general public in the way that blocks upon blocks of houses bludgeoned to death by sweeping college life and the typical twenty-five and under poverty restrictions weren't unusual. Yards peppered with red Solo cups and untrimmed lawns were a standard. The average twenty year old didn't own a lawnmower, and the concept of power washing away dirt caked on siding never managed to wedge its way between Two-Phase Flow Computational Fluid Dynamics Applications and Methodology & Language Skills. It was the surreal world where someone such as Roxas—who had essentially attended Pencey Prep—couldn't wrap his brain around people not knowing who Rad Hourani was.

He contemplated the possibilities before eventually replying with a quick, "_Address, my scrumptulescent sow_?"

A street name he had never heard of popped onto the screen, and he was soon rolling out of bed and flipping on his closet light. Deciding he should consider expanding his wardrobe selection beyond the color black, Roxas plucked out something other than sweatpants and a V-neck and went through rapid hygiene customs. Within twenty minutes he was pocketing his wallet and swinging a set of keys around his index finger. There was the fight to weave his way through the herd of his mother's miniature, longhaired dachshund collection that loved him unyieldingly with reasons unbeknownst to him, but once he had closed the connecting garage door on their obnoxious yipping, Roxas was a free man.

He always drove in silence. It wasn't that he had a personal vendetta against music, but Roxas savored silences the way some people sought out messy orgasms. His world was periodically far from quiet, but partying especially required mental preparation. He never lasted long when he travelled and party hopped in groups because there weren't intermissions he could relax through before cycling through another girl, another bong, someone's complimentary prescription. His friends rarely shut up once the booze leaked down their open throats, and it had gotten even worse once the cocaine had happened. Roxas tried to pretend _that_ hadn't happened, but he hadn't been given the opportunity to adopt an imagination as a child, so the reality mercilessly bore into him. They were stereotypes, and he was unexplainably ashamed but without reason to stop.

The building he ended up parallel parking in front of was the equivalent to a picturesque birdhouse. There was no other way for his brain to discern what he was looking at. With multiple people on the ass end of his age cluster speckled out front, their eyes were immediately drawn to his conspicuous vehicle, and Roxas was left feeling obnoxious as he shifted his weight in his leather seat with hands clenching the wheel at the six o'clock position. He should have expected this reaction when the most awe inspiring car within a ten mile radius was more than likely the newest KIA Soul model. At that thought, his eyes narrowed in on the fuel gauge, and he wondered how difficult it would be to asphyxiate himself with his own seatbelt.

There was a sudden tapping on his window.

"Rapunzel, what the fuck are you waiting on? People are already buzzing about the total d-bag with the Mercedes inside. You sure know how to make an entrance."

Yanking his key out of the ignition, Roxas opened the door and purposely smacked Hayner with it as hard as possible, only satisfied when his peer let out a groan while gripping his hipbone. Wordlessly, he slid his body out of the driver's seat, and once on both feet, locked the door behind him. The second he turned to face his fellow blond, the kid began gabbing at him as fast as possible just to fill him in on the relationship dynamics going on within the house. Hayner was spewing out names Roxas couldn't put faces to, but he listened attentively as they cut through the overgrown front yard. Within seconds their canvas shoes were dew dampened, but he didn't give himself time to dwell on the minor discomfort as they climbed the steps toward the front door.

"Who even lives here?" Not that it mattered since Roxas had attended seemingly host-less house parties more than once where he had slept in random beds and vomited on leather couches without knowing who paid the mortgage. It was more or less an attempt to let Hayner know he was paying attention.

Hayner pushed open the front door with a shrug. "A lot of people do, but I'm thinking there are four renters? Could you imagine, man? Our townhouse next year is three times this size, and we thought we were _downsizing_."

The two stepped through the doorway, and Roxas could have sworn he saw something white, fluffy, and elongated fluidly romp from the side of the 1990s chic couch and into what looked to be the kitchen. Glancing at Hayner who shrugged, they began navigating through the tiny congregations of cliques that had one thing in common, which were the plastic cups and bottles in hand. Roxas easily wasn't a fan of a lot of things, but being in a new place where he didn't know anyone and was solely dependent on a single person not to feel awkward was in the top five. It wasn't that he was socially inept. Roxas was a trained pilot in social settings, but he hated exerting the effort it took to keep up with conversations. The back and forth of faux-interest on both parties was always detectable, and he wondered how something like that could even be natural. It was like lions jumping through flaming rings without the tamer present.

"Hayner!" A man with the blond, double-sided undercut Roxas had seen striding down to runways over the past three years appeared out of seemingly nowhere. He handed Roxas a beer, and he couldn't help but to mentally scrutinize the Budweiser before cracking it open and murmuring a weak thank you. "Who's your pal?"

"Demyx, this is Roxas and then vice versa." Hayner shot Demyx an almost haughty leer, and Roxas was quick to realize his friend had sold him out to who knew how many people. He was essentially a novelty, and the concept made his stomach roil. "He's my longtime chum and soon-to-be roommate."

"That sounded sort of matrimonial, but dudes, don't go to Radiant University. You should seriously come here." He dramatically swept a hand over his hair. "Housing is pretty terrible, but _I'm_ around."

"Anyone ever tell you that's the stupidest fucking university name in existence?" The sudden voice derived from the couch, and Roxas peered over one of Demyx's broad shoulders. Sprawled out on the four cushion sofa was the person Roxas recognized as Hayner's acquaintance and main connection. Xigbar nodded at Roxas when they made eye contact, and the only thing filtering through Roxas' head in that moment was that Xigbar's eye had been nabbed out in Mexico when a deal went wrong. _Someone plucked out his fucking eyeball_. _I wonder if he can stick shit inside._ Which was juvenile, but Roxas had never claimed not to have his moments. "Roxas Eames _would_ attend Radiant University. That's impressive authentication for the stigma surrounding the bogus facade that's Downtown."

The corner of his lips quirked upward. "Jealous, Xigbar?"

"Of your self-loathing?" He returned Roxas' smirk with one that was more like a shit eating grin before burying his face in his cup. "Now why the fuck would anyone—"

"Perfect eyebrows, abs harder than a twink's in high class pornography, and a dazzling smile," Hayner listed and Roxas arched one of the aforementioned perfect eyebrows when an arm slung around his shoulders. The sudden shift in weight made his knees buckle. "The kind of genetics reserved for the Third Reich, man. It makes up for the internal stuff we all deal with, yeah?"

Demyx pointed towards the crowded stairs. "Too high for this to head in the direction it's gunning for. One of you creepy dolls please tell me you're willing to fork over for something _shiny_?"

Roxas gave a contemplative hum before dragging a hand along the back of his head. The thing about rolling right then was that he was exhausted from a couple nights before. He had to wonder if he even had the serotonin to keep up with everyone else. The knowledge behind it made the effort seem as if it'd be a redundant attempt, and he knew it didn't take a biomedical scientist to figure that out. Of course, he was having the kind of day where he was willing to try anything in order to cleanse his system of his life's stank.

There was an abrupt screech from the kitchen followed by a shattering glass that breeched his train of thought, and at the collection of sound, Demyx abruptly bound halfway up the stairs before yelling. "Diamond, your rat is scaring the vaginas again!"

"She's not a rat, you vindictive virgin! She's a domesticated mammal of the type Mustela putorius furo, and she's a lot smarter than you, cockroach."

"That insult was displaced. I'm everything but a cockroach! You _clearly_ know me so well!"

The next structure of words was thick with agitation. "Like the back of my bitch slapping hand!"

"You could have considered that a compliment." Roxas suddenly broke into the conversation with a raised volume, his own voice weird to him. "Cockroaches survive everything, and if you want to make yourself sound as smart as him, then they're called Periplaneta americana."

"Futile assistance, stranger!" The disembodied voice was at the top of the stairs. "If you'd wanted him to impress me, then you would have said Blattaria!"

Maybe it was because Roxas lived in a land where his coping mechanism was evading all sources of consequential memories, but he didn't take into consideration the remarkable name Demyx had shouted upon climbing the stairs. This was why he was unreasonably flabbergasted when a pair of mile long legs began descending the stairs, and the lanky appendages ended up being connected to a torso with the kind of head only Helen Keller could have forgotten. At first, Roxas wanted to be surprised and sprint from the living room because this was the man who _knew_. Axel Diamond—as if he could really forget that kind of fucking name—was the sole person who had seen him on the brink of mental implosion.

Of course, this was all incredibly difficult to process because on top of it being Axel Diamond, the man was shirtless with the kind of jeans slung so low on his hips that everyone and their mother knew the drapes matched the carpet. The peculiar part was that the shock factor had nothing to do with those defined hipbones accenting the kind of navel Roxas would have happily dragged his tongue along while completely sober or the way he rolled those broad shoulders with the kind of smile bright enough to simmer corneas. No, it was the approximately foot in diameter pentagram drawn on his chest in what looked to be strawberry syrup, and Roxas would have sworn the smear through the middle could have only been accomplished by a tongue. This left him in an awkward place because _oh—fuck, stop staring like that. Jesus Christ, I'm the biggest faggot I know in all the land of Faggotry_.

"The Devil ain't pleased with your interruptions." Axel's words were like the smoothest coffee, and Roxas was tempted to bite his tongue off because he was comparing the tenor of someone's voice to a latte. _Hormones, shut the fuck up. He's hot enough to eat a fucking birthday cake off of. I get it._ "I was in the middle of an important human sacrifice when you interrupted me with your heartrending stupidity. Now, where's the person who was trying to make you _not_ look like an ignoramus?"

"Over here!" Hayner waved before pointing at Roxas who was still stupidly gaping and trying to remember how lips went back together and that whole jaw functioning thing worked. Roxas shrugged out from beneath his arm thanks to the obnoxious edge. He was borderline embarrassed. "Biology major to be right here! Roxas _Eames_ right here!"

The second they made eye contact Roxas could tell Axel's memory was on point. The corner of the ginger's mouth quirked upward, and he was even more certain the man recognized him because there was this imminent kismet bubbling within the pit of his stomach the second a glint appeared in his amused, green eyes. Then again, that issue could have probably been related to the fact Roxas hadn't had a single thing to eat within the past twelve hours, but he wasn't about to dumb down the melodramatics. Roxas' chest was thick with a strange smoke that wasn't the kind he could recreationally benefit from, but damn, recreational smoking suddenly sounded nice along with an entire fifth of vodka. He could not handle this. Where was the fainting chaise lounge and smelling salts? He was about to hit the motherfucking John Deer green carpet, and he was _delicate_.

"Then the heavens opened up and the lovely Ella Fitzgerald floated downward singing Blue Moon because those are the nicest eyes in the world, kiddo."

Roxas realized talking was a socially acceptable thing to do in that moment. "Did you spend the last six months coming up with that?"

Axel snorted. "Even if I did it was plenty less painful than the thirty seconds it just took you to come back with that half-wit, snarky question."

"You two know each other?" Demyx planted a hand on Axel's bare shoulder and continued before either one of them could answer. The reluctance Axel displayed when tearing apart their eye contact was someone ripping fabric with bare hands. "But, dude, put Putrid in her cage. She's kind of gross, and this place is a big enough sausage fest. Stop scaring off the women. You're only _so_ charming."

"The ladies love Putrid. She's my token child." Axel clicked his tongue and whistled. Perfectly on cue, an albino ferret with a bell collar scampered from the kitchen and up the remaining stairs to meet her owner. Axel was quick to bend down and scoop her up. "Look at her, Demyx. _Look at her_."

He leaned back when the redhead began shoving her in his face. "I'm looking. I'm looking."

"Gorgeous, eh?" And, as Axel continued with his taunting, Roxas found himself carefully examining the ferret's preoccupation with the sweet and sticky design slathered along her owner's skin. For some reason, he couldn't help but _want _her to go for it and bite him. He wasn't sure why. "Roxas and Roxas' friend, how long are you guys hanging out tonight?"

Roxas exchanged glances with Hayner and shrugged before returning his stare to Axel. By then, the man was making kissy faces at Putrid who was seemingly kissing back, but Roxas had a feeling she was more interested in the scent radiating off of him than affections.

Hayner spoke up first. "We've only got a few more hours until the sun comes up."

"Word." For a man with a seemingly well-trained brain, Roxas was befuddled by the ineloquent response. "Let me finish with the ritual upstairs and then we can smoke a bowl before going to get food somewhere because I'm fucking starving, and there's nothing in the house."

That was a demand. Roxas suddenly wondered if there was a sort of hierarchy among the people in the house because Demyx wasn't even questioning the plan. Then again, Roxas was also a subspecies of his kind where relationships interwoven throughout even the closest of friends were never completely trusting, and there was this strange enthusiasm for analyzing motives. Pursing his lips at the realization that he was going to be stuck with his current company until mid-morning, he decided he was going to need to make the best of it i.e. drink himself into puke soaked oblivion.

He was graceful at vomiting. Of course, that was what he tried to tell himself anytime he found himself stumbling towards the closest trashcan with the burning knowledge that stomach acid would be scorching the interior of his throat within seconds. The thought of the discomfort always tore him to pieces because it was something he wanted. The all-consuming sensation of heaving shoulders and contracting abdominal muscles that forced him to wretch until tears were in his eyes. He drank for the sole purpose of upchucking as much of his stomach as physically possible, and he didn't care. He just dwelled on it to the point of putting himself in a trance. That was why—a couple hours after Axel had vanished into what he had referred to as his sanctuary—Roxas didn't notice said redhead pushing open the bathroom door as he forced up beer into the porcelain shitter. Sometimes, he imagined the entirety of his stomach getting lodged in his throat like this pink, fleshy, mangled sack of human tissue. Just there, there, and he'd stop breathing.

"Your poise is impeccable." Axel's words forced Roxas to choke on his own acrid saliva, and he side glanced just in time to watch the man wet a wash rag. His entire chest was this sticky slate of glistening skin. "Didn't your mommy and daddy train you better than that? That's what preparatory schools are based around, right? Training children to hide their boredom induced addictions until they can be shipped off to reformation Ivy League schools?"

"I'm not going to an Ivy League," he sputtered out even though that wasn't the thing he should have addressed. Roxas never had understood his own selection methods, but he had a feeling he secretly would agree with Axel if given the time to really _think_. "I'm either majoring in Biology or Law at Radiant this fall."

"How _disappointing._" But Axel said this with a good-natured smirk as he wiped away as much funk as he could. "At least Dartmouth sounds cool in the low budget gay porno kind of way. Anyway, you've been dry heaving for the past few minutes. You're probably in the clear, kiddo."

"Yeah." He had to wonder where his vocabulary with all its impetus derived from. "Probably."

"You know, maybe you should go to bed and skip out on the food?" He looked Roxas over with the kind of hypercritical stare strong enough to force the blond to his feet in the name of pride. Of course, the abrupt vertigo had him dropping to his knees and spewing dandelion bile into the toilet. "Jesus Christ, you're a hot mess. Were you like this pre-suicide attempt or are these post-effects of you coping with your survival?"

Roxas' oblique glare was followed by another gag, but a burp was soon subsequence. "Post-survival."

The redhead's lips pursed and he screwed up his eyes as if in deep thought. "I'm not sure if I should feel responsible in some way."

"Alcoholism runs in my family."

"My name's Roxas and I am an alcoholic. _Hi, Roxas_." He paused. "Okay, we'll be fair here. My name's Axel and I am an excruciatingly attractive man in his mid-twenties with a penchant for sciences. _Hi, Axel_. Good, okay. I feel that we now have a deeper understanding of one another, and the scale is balanced—okay, _really_, are you done there? You _can't _have anything in your fucking guts if you're puking up yellow shit."

"Go away," he muttered while wondering if he could fall asleep on the toilet seat.

"I'm not even going to begin to point out the improper etiquette that's telling someone to go away in their own house. _Raggio di sole_, and I hope you don't mind me calling you that because even if you _do_ that doesn't mean I'm going to stop. You should seriously go to fucking bed. I'll let you sleep on the cushion at the end of my mattress reserved for the night's pick from the harem."

"Are you serious right now?" _Of course he isn't, fuck ass._ "I _am_ fine, and you're sending me these snarky, mixed, mother hen messages. Am I _supposed_ to find any sincerity in what you're going on about because I'm having a really hard time."

"That you are."

"Excuse me?"

"Having a hard time." Leaning down, the man caught Roxas' bicep and yanked him to his feet. "All good? No more stomach acid fucking up those bleached teeth?"

At first, he contemplated putting up a fight, but he was tired. Not that those feelings were new or anything, but the fatigue was growing to be physical, and honestly, Axel was bigger than him. He was toned in all the right places, and though Roxas probably could have stood his ground or at least yanked his arm out of the hold, he was to the point where being guided out the bathroom like a scolded child was perfectly acceptable. All Roxas truly wanted at that point in time was to brush his teeth and get back into his bed with images of starving children flitting across his plasma screen, which was why he was frustrated with himself for shooting down Axel's offer to sleep. Had he not been so stubborn someone could have directed him to a corner on a bedroom floor, and he would have happily dropped dead on spot.

"I thought you found some dark place and died for the night!" Hayner caught Roxas' shoulder the second Axel let him go.

He just wasn't that lucky.

They ended up skipping the bowl, and Hayner ushered him towards Axel's car, which just so happened to be a new KIA Soul. Axel himself had yanked on a V-neck that had been tossed over the back of the couch before throwing a set of keys into his back pocket and following suit. As the group began yanking open doors and climbing onto seats, Roxas wondered if he could go to sleep or even better; maybe his life would be timely for once, and they would end up in a tragic car accident. Being pavement jelly was looking significantly less painful than the headache he was going cross eyed over.

"It's a good thing I hate alcohol." Axel announced as he pulled out of the driveway. "We'd be noshing on some serious marinara sauce right now, otherwise."

Roxas blinked before pressing his cheek against the car window, and he wondered why he hung out with Hayner when they always ended up being dragged through the stupidest of situations. He decided there was no point in thinking about it, and with a breathy exhale, Roxas watched buildings drag through his vision like yellow lines. With blurry surroundings, he didn't have anything to say as casual conversation floated throughout the group. Hayner was more than capable of guiding the conversation alone, which was what he did all the way to the twenty-four hour diner with its cheap food and even cheaper waitress gimmick.

"You're looking shittacular, Roxas," Axel announced.

Dragging his fingernails along the tabletop with only a cup of steaming coffee settled beneath his nose, Roxas was drowning in the kind of brain splitting agony known only to the brimstone configured structure that was Beelzebub's fart permeated manor. A jackhammer's trilling composition was ricocheting off the interior of his skull like a bullet in a tin garbage can, and he wanted to die. Roxas was positive this wasn't news to himself, and he probably shouldn't have toyed with comparing his want to rid his substance punched fatigue with death, but he did anyway. Society had taught him to play down death until it occurred. _Old habits die hard_, and he nearly groaned at his own tacky pun.

"I wasn't aware we were attending a beauty pageant." Staring into the mug, he wanted to dip his teeth into the black substance. Roxas was an iota away from slicing off his tongue, stabbing it with a fork, and plunging it in his coffee before trying to swallow it down. Without the assistance of his tongue, he was bound to choke on a combination of congealing blood and muscle chewed into the consistency of hamburger. "I'm not out to impress."

Demyx took it upon himself to pour syrup on Roxas' untouched pancakes. "That's a great way to approach life if you're planning on being Kraft singles forever."

"Not that he needs to try," Hayner grumbled as a shoved a piece of bacon in between teeth. "I should've gotten pancakes. Fuck this French toast. Pancakes are overrated anyway."

Axel leaned back as if someone had told him his mother's posterior was Jupiter's twin sister. "Pancakes are _never_ overrated and French toast is for senior citizens."

Roxas snorted and finally began picking at his food. "I like French toast."

"Hold on," said Axel as he extracted his cellphone from his pocket and began prodding at the touch screen. "I'm telling Xigbar he needs to set up the stake and make sure we have enough lighter fluid because we're tying you up when we get back, and I'm going to watch you burn."

"It's an honor to be considered worth the trouble. To think you find my misdeed relevant enough for a ceremonial burning."

"Don't be such a self-aggrandizer, Roxas." The redhead reached over with his fork and stabbed one of the pancakes as if he was trying to spear a fish. "I just like watching things burn to shit, and it wouldn't be ceremonial. You burning would be a statement to anyone who thinks they have the audacity to voice their breakfast food opinions in my presence."

He watched as Axel dragged the disc-shaped carbohydrate onto his own plate. "How tyrannical of you."

Axel readily agreed. "I'm pretty controlling, but I'm pretty sure that's in the fine print of my DNA. I can't recall a time I haven't been that way. There's no psychological root to it either. I just am."

There was a fleeting silence as everyone munched away at their food, and Roxas looked past Demyx's shoulder and noted the sun rising through the diner's front windows. Wondering if he was sobered up enough to drive home, he was ready to walk in on his mom's hired chef chopping away at the family lunch's prep work with coffee brewing on the counter and annoying miniature dogs nipping at his ankles for treats. As exasperating as the animals could be, Roxas didn't mind piling up in bed with the herd and taking a snooze. They were unconventional heated blankets.

"You guys could sleep over," Demyx murmured before taking an elongated sip from his cup of orange juice. "I don't know about you two but I'd probably fall asleep at the wheel trying to drive all the way to uptown after booze, a food coma and no sleep."

"Word," Hayner said before Roxas could refuse, and he was a millisecond away from take his butter knife and skinning his friend alive. The last thing Roxas wanted to do was couch surf at a stranger's house. "We'll stay. Don't want Roxas wrecking his new Mercedes."

If looks could kill, then Roxas' stare would have pulled a Vlad the Impaler and wedged a foot in diameter spike up Hayner's rectum.

When the bills were paid and the idle chatter regained its rapid fire rhythm, they returned to Axel's car. Roxas could practically smell the impending doom as they approached his vehicle, and he wondered if he could pull a Regina George and have Hayner push him in front of a bus. God knew he was jealous enough to at least think about doing something along those lines, so he had faith that—with a little coaxing—he could be murdered and pretend it wasn't assisted suicide. Sure, Roxas could have left. It wasn't as if he was stranding Hayner anywhere since his friend had his own car. They were also both legal adults who had basic authority over the decisions of their lives, but it was instilled in him to keep up appearances and refrain from making situations awkward. It was protocol to rapidly smooth out social wrinkles, and he couldn't break the custom. Being a proper faker was all he knew.

Figuring out where to sleep was the last thing Roxas had considered as a potential aneurysm inducer, but when they stepped through the front door of Axel's house and began parting ways in hopes of finding blankets, he wondered how uncomfortable the beer stained carpet would be if he put a towel down beneath him. Blankly gazing at a corner in the living room as if genuinely contemplating the place as a resting place, he was pretty sure the original misconception of the earth being flat had more curve than his current demeanor.

"Bet that harem cushion is looking mighty nice." Axel draped an arm around Roxas' shoulders, and he laughed when the blond visibly tensed up. "Look, morning glory. I'm trying to avoid a serious confrontation with you, but I kind of want to talk to you, but like, be real about it? No bullshit, kiddo."

Roxas turned his head, and it was then he realized Axel too had the faintest of freckles scattered across his nose. His dark complexion made them blend from a distance, but since they were but three inches from each other's faces, he had a chance to take it in. The striking part was how the seemingly dense green of his eyes was splintered by weaving trails of yellow, and Roxas' tongue went dry again. He somehow managed to hate himself even more because it did.

"Are we going to talk about bridges?"

"Do you want me to be honest?"

Roxas thought on that. "No."

"Then we're not going to talk about bridges."

Glancing back over at the corner, he shrugged Axel's arm off his shoulders and began the hike up the trash ornamented staircase. "Fine."

* * *

_New Tumblr URL: 5moked5almon_  
_Essentially the only place I can be reached._


	3. Tinkerbell

_**Chapter Three: Tinkerbell**_

Sometimes, when someone is sitting in front of a stranger and ripping the cellophane off a pack of cigarettes that isn't the brand they smoke in silence, they manage to hit every confessional booth in the damn city. Roxas crinkled his nose as he attempted to flick the shrinking cellophane off his fingertips, and when Axel leaned forward to snatch the shrinking plastic off his shaking hand, the blond did everything in his power not to retract as if someone had threatened him with a clenched fist. A stare off between them ensued because Axel had noticed, and Roxas wanted to know why his tongue was a perpetually stunned mole. Without unending pressure to boost his social instincts, the teenager was fighting off rushes of what he believed to be idiocy. They were accompanied by surges of nausea and dying children.

"What's the story, morning glory?" Axel's words were accompanied by a small smirk. "You don't have to word vomit what's on your mind. You standing there was the kind of awkward that made my viscera curdle. I had to get you out of there. You were a burning orphanage and people were tossing crisped infants off the top story balcony. The balcony hovers over cement, Roxas. It was a gooey mess and epidermises were flaking."

"That's disgusting," he grumbled and ripped away foil. "Really fucking disgusting."

"Blistering organs." The taller of the two sat down on the bed next to him before glancing at a decorative throw pillow. Roxas was certain it had belonged to a family of rats before making its way onto the mattress. "And that's where you're sleeping. Putrid told me she doesn't mind."

His words were dead. "Your harem?"

"_That_ pillow is in the washing machine because I run a sterile establishment. Thank you."

"Did you have to bleach out the strawberry syrup?"

Axel snorted. "Shout works just fine, and aren't you observant."

"It doesn't take a lot of observation when you have a pentagram drawn on your chest."

"Religious symbols are constructed by society to be distracting and bring forth attention. The only thing capable of capturing your attention faster would be the yellow and red McDonalds signs on the highway. God or the arches, they asked, and Jesus wouldn't blame you for picking that Big Mac because he's the good guy and understands that not-so-secret secret sauce is on par with holiness."

"It's just thousand island dressing."

Making an expression of horror, Axel exhaled in artificial disbelief. "I'll wash your mouth out with soap."

Twisting his lips to the side, Roxas had abandoned the cigarettes by his knee. "Are you religious?"

"I mean, aren't all philosophy majors dedicated to singular theocracy?"

Sitting there for a moment, Roxas wondered if then would be an appropriate time to call Axel out for having previously told him that such a chosen major was essentially a death wish, but he remained tight lipped. Instead of speaking, he glanced over at the man's face without an inkling of an idea what to say. His fingers were picking at the dark fabric of his jeans, and for a split-second, his eyebrows furrowed. There was an oddness about being in a stranger's bedroom, and Axel's bedroom was something that would stain his memory the way grass bled onto white soccer jerseys. It was a skidding fall with broken skin, crumbling fibulas, and purple bruises swirling into a twinkling nebula of yellows.

There had clearly been a motif what with the psychedelic paisley tapestries and strewn around knickknacks inspired by Indian culture. Roxas had to wonder if Axel drew inspiration from a girl who referred to the hippie chic Bible that was Urban Outfitter because that was definitely gold glitter smeared across the vanity mirror, and yes, those pants were metallic rose. Every item splayed out on shelves in uncoordinated clusters appeared to have been manufactured with the intent to seem as if they'd been hand selected from flea markets. Though he wanted to amuse himself with the idea, Roxas couldn't see Axel antiquing.

"Tell me something about _you_," Axel announced to the ceiling before throwing himself back onto the mattress. "And then I'll go to sleep."

"I have nothing to tell."

"That's pathetically sad, and a rather bleak way to sum up your existence to another person." He paused. "For my senior year talent show my best friend and I sang Take On Me and we got first place because we were the only ones who signed up. Now that you know that I'm going to sleep."

Axel stood up, yanked off his shirt, and with jeans still on, he made his way to the side of the bed he preferred before collapsing onto his stomach. Roxas was still sitting up when he watched the man set an alarm on his phone, and he wondered why this was happening in the first place. He didn't sleep in strangers' beds, and he didn't think it was one of those situations where he was necessarily being forced to sleep in someone's bed. Axel didn't give off the kind of vibe implying he'd wake up in a situation where he was hanging upside down with shackled ankles and a whip made of steel ripping down his spine until he was a filleted open fish with intestines hanging like party streamers. Then again, he had mentioned being a naturally dominant person, and Roxas pursed his lips at the possible implications. He wasn't sure if he found that enticing or horrifying, but he was pretty sure his inexperienced side was pushing for the horrified edge of the scale. He wasn't to the point in his life where he could balance it out much. Roxas had the sexual authority of a Sarah McLachlan commercial.

"Hey, sunshine," Axel suddenly murmured into his pillow. "Go to sleep or something because you sitting up like that is making my nerves churn. It has a serial killer flare to it."

Roxas laid down, but he didn't immediately sleep. Instead, he wondered about the porcelain elephants sitting on Axel's desk in a neat row and why he hadn't just drove home.

* * *

Something clattered beside his head when he woke up, and when eyelids peeled open and the sun bleached the blue from his sockets, he saw a cork jar, pink tube of glitter, oil and a bottle of water. Following the arts and crafts supplies, there was a face daringly close to his own, and he wished he hadn't immediately recognized it. Axel wasn't something he could rip from his memory like a poster off a wall, and it was annoying. He probably could have gone brain dead, and the gravelly tenor of his voice would've been the solely familiar thing that forced him out of a hopeless coma, which was weird. It was weird because he had no idea who Axel was beyond a last name and suicidal tendencies, and to be honest, he wasn't sure if he wanted to know anything else. Alarms were flashing and he could practically see the EMTs running up stairs and tripping over ferret toys.

"I was with my little sister earlier today," he said with a serious tone. "She showed me something."

Roxas snatched his phone out of his pocket and fumbled with the touch screen for several seconds before finally getting the time to reveal itself. Groaning when he realized the time was closing in on four in the afternoon, he wondered if his sleeping schedule could be pissed on anymore. Already he had been waking up past noon, but this was ridiculous even for his standard. His headache wasn't lightening the mood either. In fact, the jackhammer making love with his brain was becoming sticky with a side dish of raunchy, and he was in agony. He wanted to crack his skull open and lick the fluids up for breakfast.

"Remember when you were thirteen and the world was against you?" Axel sat down on the floor beside the mattress where Roxas was still waking up. "You hated yourself more than anyone else could ever hope to, and you were almost content with the self-loathing? Well, my sister is thirteen and then some."

Roxas was still bleary eyed. "I just woke up."

"She deals with her issues by artfully crafting feelings jars."

The blond exhaled, but he arched an eyebrow and gave Axel an expectant look because he didn't want to get up yet, and really, who was he to push aside someone with a tube of pink glitter? Catching his cue, Axel snatched the contents off the nightstand and began shaking flakes of glitter into the bottom of the jar with a neutral expression. As he did this, Roxas wondered how someone could've been graced with the kind of features Axel had without the genetic obligation to steer him in the direction of modeling. It wasn't conventional beauty, but that was what made him so perfect for the world where retirement came into play before hitting the third decade of life.

Axel suddenly stopped and pursed his lips. "So, Roxas, how many feelings do you think you have?"

"Give me a scale."

"On a scale of one to What's Eating Gilbert Grape."

"Boys Don't Cry."

Axel hummed and brought the jar closer to his face for inspection. "Are you asking me to dump the entire container here or what? I'll do it, but the point of this exercise would become void. Then again, I'm not a certified therapist, so you're not handing me a signed check in order to fax the psychologist my recommendations for your psychotherapeutic drugs."

"I'm not sure if this is supposed to be scale size or a model because if it's scale, then we'll need a swimming pool and an order directly from the manufacturer."

Not answering the implied question, Axel took it upon himself to shake nearly half the glitter into the jar. "The feelings in this jar are awe inspiring."

"You're making fun of my feelings."

"_Mn_—affirmative."

"No, it wasn't a question. I'm aware."

Axel dragged his tongue along his bottom lip and Roxas watched the wet muscle with a disenchanted squint as the other choked back a laugh. When there was apparently an appropriate amount of glitter dispersed, Axel uncapped the water bottle and poured just enough so the cork would be able to fit without causing a glittery overflow. His fingertips were speckled in flakes of light catching pink, and Roxas' eyes focused on the way skin worked over joints and the thumb pressed the cork in as securely as possible. He wondered if the top needed to be sealed with super glue, and he wondered if the mattress was a strait jacket because he was struggling to move and screaming at nurses about how his mother's snatch was a shrine to a virus, but there he was in blank stillness. He abruptly decided he hated his mother, and there was no refuting that. His mother was dumpster scum, and he was the product of aged skank and meshing genitalia.

"You shake it," Axel said. "And you set it down and watch the glitter fall. When all the glitter hits the bottom you're no longer upset about whatever life's tossed your way. It's a method parents use on small children, especially emotionally incapacitated kids with sensory issues, but you can bet your ass I'd endorse the executive decision to force them on everyone."

"Do you really believe they work?"

"Probably better than pill gnashing, yeah." Axel placed the finished craft project on the nightstand and stood up to brush glitter off his thighs. The specks floated off him like fairy dust, and Roxas used an open palm to suddenly force his torso upright. Staring straight ahead, his mouth was sticky, his body ached, and his throat was sore from an overexposure to the stomach acid he'd spent the night before burping up. He reached for his eyes and began rubbing flakes of gunk from the corners. He wiped them off on the jeans he wished he hadn't slept in and sighed.

"Your Hayner friend zoomed out a couple hours ago. That's what Demyx told me, at least." Axel opened the door to his room. "You can leave whenever, and you might want to drop the guy a line because I'm pretty sure he thought I shoved you into the Iron Maiden I keep under my bed. It's for when the harem visits go painfully wrong and the situation needs a quick fix."

"It's hard to tell when you're joking."

"Rest assured that wasn't a joke."

The blankets were soon pushed off his legs, and Roxas pocketed his phone once he was on his feet. He had slept with keys in his back pocket, and right when he was about to take a jog out the bedroom door, he also snatched the feelings jar off the tabletop. Shaking it for good measure, he watched the glitter only to notice the contorted view of a glass curved Axel then leaned against the door's frame. When he brought the bottle down just enough to see him without vision skewed by glitter and water, the man was giving him a Mona Lisa.

"Are you interested in serial killers or just moronic enough not to catch the insinuations there?"

Roxas attempted to remain straight-faced, but it faltered into a minimalistic smile as he walked past Axel without any intention of thanking him for the bed to sleep in or dragging him out of the bathroom he had attempted to condemn himself to. The two exchanged glances and Roxas did his best not to turn into a slack-jawed mess radiating everything but grace. Axel was one of those individuals who looked at people and put them under the kind of spell involving whale noises and seizing, which was an exaggeration, but Roxas was both sexually oppressed and repressed. A lump of maggot infested SPAM could've given him bedroom eyes at that point, and he would've coyly looked back while waggling his fingers. He was in a bad place in his life, and Roxas wasn't the kind who could defend his desperate nature.

"My heart just fluttered into a field of daisies, Mr. Baby Blues. You smiled at my irrefutable cleverness."

"That's what you call it?"

Axel didn't follow Roxas down the stairs, but that didn't keep him from talking. "Oh, I sincerely apologize! I meant my irresistible charm!"

"You're generous with your vocabulary, Mr. Diamond!" Roxas yanked his keys out of his pocket and disregarded the standing bodies he strode past. "_Oh-so_ very generous!"

"Be my Scarlett O'Hara, Mr. Eames! Say you will, and I'll run down those fucking stairs and sweep you away!"

"Too bold!"

"You never struck me as a man with dainty taste!"

"I've never enjoyed black coffee!"

Without realizing what was happening, Roxas walked out the front door with a laugh pulling from the back of his throat, but he abruptly halted and glanced over his shoulder. The door was shut behind him as if a gust of wind had done the dirty work for him, and in that moment, he sincerely hoped he never saw Axel Diamond again. There were certain people in the world he avoided. They were the people who understood and gave him reason to pick at the gore he cloaked with a bright future he had been handed on the day of his conception. The kind of people who informed him he was real and stupid and probably needed an entire shelf dedicated to feelings jars with glitter spanning across the entire rainbow. Beautiful people with knowledge who simultaneously strode ahead with both their heart and mind interwoven, and Roxas wasn't constructed to carry the weight they brought. He knew he was the type that meandered in his mind and walked the paths others paved for him because there was human conditioning to blame. No one had left him out to dry, and Roxas had never been given reason to fight for himself, so he had no way justify starting now.

He drove from Axel's place to his house where he packed the bare minimum into a leather overnight bag and escorted himself back to his car. There was no point in leaving a note behind because Roxas knew his cousin would call his mother whenever he decided to sleep. The world and Roxas never fought, but when he realized he would never be close enough to start a war with it, he decided those were the times when he needed to disappear to his cousin Naminé's beach house.

The beach house had once been her husband's, but after the couple had divorced due to an affair, she had won the property in the settlement. Though the town had looked at the couple's falling out as something predictable and another throw away marriage meant to stain what lifelong unions used to stand for, Roxas knew better. He had spent countless nights with a wine drunken Naminé watching her cry into a glass and soak up tears with the heels of her palms because she had gone against everything her parents had begged her not to only to find herself belly up without any aspect of her life on track. She had gone to college for painting knowing full well there weren't many career prospects associated with the major, and upon graduating, had been forced to beg her mother to help her find a job with a low grade designer. She had married her college lover even though her father had advised her to do everything but, and after a lavish wedding meant to outdo every girl on the brink of wedding planning, the man of her dreams was caught red-handed in his studio with a cute and very underage barista from Uptown. Naminé had been pregnant by that point, and the icing on the cake was when the stress from her divorce caused a late term miscarriage that had shattered her beyond immediate repair.

Roxas wasn't sure why he spent so much time at the twenty-six year old's house when he knew the place was doused in negative energy. Maybe it was the naps he took on the beach where he cleared his head until he had again convinced himself nothingness was more proactive than free thoughts or maybe it really was Naminé. The girl with a talent she had dreamt of honing was the most human thing he'd ever had prolonged exposure to, and in a lot of ways, she made him feel loved. Unlike his mother, Naminé wasn't too preoccupied to thoughtlessly drag her fingers through his hair when she rambled about the effects the moon had on people. She taught him how to cook simple foods when rain brought on gusts of salty wind and angered the sea, she listened to every word that dripped from his tongue like a tipped jar of honey without dreaming of interrupting, and she meandered through her house barefoot while reading him snippets of Maya Angelou's _I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings_.

"Are you hungry?"

He saw those words coming before she even opened the front door. There would be coffee brewed, a painting drying in the corner of the living room that connected to both the kitchen and dining room in a single open sweep, and something would either be in the oven or on the stovetop. Roxas was her refugee, and she seemingly could sense whenever he planned on showing up for a warm quilt and someone to talk to. That's what it always boiled down to, and they both were on the same page, same sentence, same word when it came to the truth about his visits. He needed an ear, and Naminé was more than willing to fill the void for him because she'd never been able to do the same at his age.

"I haven't had time to eat today," he murmured as he walked inside with his bag's strap slung across his chest. "I was sort of busy."

She was wearing a green maxi dress and with nothing on her bare feet as she shut the door behind him. Frowning at the door when the scent of booze and sickeningly sweet incense wafted off of her vertically challenged cousin, Naminé refrained from digging for details. Instead, she followed him into the kitchen where he had sought out a bottle of water and Advil. All of these things were dead giveaways to what he had been up to, and she reluctantly chalked it up to his age.

"You could stop for five seconds to eat _something_."

He opened her cabinets and grabbed a box of clubhouse crackers. "Look at me. I'm eating. I'm about to stuff half this box down my throat, and I'll have taken in the daily recommended amount of calories. I'll have met the nutritional standard of a privileged American white boy, and you'll weep for me and whisper to yourself, _'Yes, bless his heart_. _Roxas ate clubhouse crackers_. _He did it.'_"

"I'm going to try my best to excuse that by telling myself smart ass tendencies are an Eames thing."

"It's genetics," he said while struggling to open the packaging. "I can't help myself."

"You're going to need to eat more than crackers." Naminé meandered over to her refrigerator and opened the door. "I was going to make cream of asparagus soup, but that's probably not filling enough for you. I could roast chicken breast, too."

Roxas popped two crackers into his mouth before speaking. "Seriously, I'm fine with just crackers."

"Crackers aren't going to do much for a hangover."

"That obvious, huh?"

"Have I ever told you you're the king of conspicuousness?"

He shrugged and rolled his eyes while chewing. "No idea what you're talking about, sweet cousin of mine. I've always been confident in my lying abilities."

"That's another Eames trait, right there."

"What's that?"

"Bullshit."

Roxas grinned and watched as she removed chicken wrapped in brown butcher paper from fridge and plop it down on the countertop. As she went about her relaxed cooking routine he was so familiar with, Roxas took a moment to wonder how this Naminé was the same girl who had once been so reserved during Christmas dinners and Thanksgiving celebrations. She was the gorgeous poster child for Downtown. She should have been someone's porcelain doll housewife. She should have had a discreet affair with her gardener while she fed off her husband's bank account, and she should have had five children, but she was everything but what she _should_ have been and Roxas admired her for it. Somewhere along the line, Naminé had traded solid ground for shaky uncertainties, and though the universe had turtled on her, she admitted she was still happier as she currently was than living the life she had led beneath her parents' authority. Roxas periodically wondered how she had found it in herself to take the running leap off the cliff and into murky waves. The girl hadn't gotten her feet wet. No, she had practically drowned herself.

Roxas didn't tell her he had puked again until she finished making him eat. He was sitting on her back porch with a half-finished glass of Chardonnay in hand, and he hated himself for telling her because she stared at him with doe eyes loaded with distress and compassion. He wanted to savor every bit of her love until he was drunk off the affection all while simultaneously contemplating holding her head under the waves until her lungs died burning deaths. She knew everything about him, and it was terrifying. No one was supposed to understand he had more facets than the pieces of paper he considered his friends. When he was leaned over his knees with sunken shoulders and a complete disregard for what he was obligated to feel, Roxas furrowed his brows and wondered if it was okay to cry into bent legs with her hand settled between his shoulder blades. He couldn't convince himself he wasn't alone in a world where only the girls rubbed their knuckles raw with acid and teeth, and he couldn't convince himself anyone would understand what he did had nothing to do with aesthetics.

She watched the bathroom closer and held his hands when his fingers were cold and raw, and she asked him about things completely unrelated to the thoughts racing through her brain. Her words were consistently soft, and she looked at him in a way that was reassuring and helped him fight off the urge to hide away on the bathroom floor like a centipede. She was a pillar for when he remembered the collections in his closet and beneath his bed, and on occasions, he wanted to ask her how she had done it. Of course, he never was able to articulate words to the point of outright seeking advice.

"Maybe you should go on vacation with me in a week or two?"

"Hayner can't get his head out of his ass long enough to get anything done with our house, and I don't want his mom making the executive decisions on my furniture. I'm stuck here."

"I'm sure she wouldn't do a bad job."

"I'm not interested in cottage chic."

"You can't live in a world of black and white, Roxas." She finished her own glass before exhaling. "Maybe some color would do you good?"

"I think I look pretty good in black and white," he stared at the shoreline before shrugging. "There're people who're colorblind and live completely content lives."

"That's all they know, though." Naminé stared into her cup as she swirled the collected droplets around. "If you can make the time, then I really think a break would do you some good."

"It's not like I do much of anything to begin with. Of all people to need a vacation," he grumbled and drained his glass. "That's a joke."

Roxas spent the next two days surfing Naminé's couch and sleeping on the beach with a turned off phone and absolutely no interest in tuning into the rest of universe. There was sand to be baked to a crisp on and a brain to defog, and the only thing he ever missed while hiding away at Naminé's was porn and the convenience of crawling in between the legs of a girl who probably knew more about his family than he did. His visits were groggy conversations about his want to take a year off from college and spend his free time camping in a state park and masturbating to the sound of chirping crickets. He told her the stories about Hayner and him touching each other's dicks in the woods behind the playground during elementary school, and he couldn't figure out why his best friend had kissed him in that heated sloppy way sixth graders do in the back of a dark bus after a soccer game. Hayner was straight. Roxas was straight. That was the end of that road, and when he was done with the topic, Naminé handed him a bowl of salad and made a point to keep him occupied until she was positive his food had digested.

"Your dad has been trying to call you," Naminé said after checking her cellphone for text messages from his mother. "He's apparently threatening to shut your phone off."

Roxas rolled his eyes as he shoved a spoonful of white chili into his mouth. He was settled at her kitchen table with his feet kicked up and a bottle of water balanced between his legs. He was on his last clean t-shirt, and when that happened, there was always an impending doom associated with having to leave. The sound of crashing waves would revert from reality to a yearning in his blood stream and an ache in his joints. He'd have to return to his bedroom with an activated phone and connection to every person he'd had a conversation with that lasted longer than twenty minutes.

"He'd never shut it off. Dad wouldn't know what to do with himself if he couldn't use every speck of his free time to breathe on the back of my neck." Roxas chewed as he turned his phone on. "Anyway, I've been meaning to ask you something."

She chewed with a keen stare. "Mhm?"

"Have you ever hung out with Uptown kids?"

"I did in high school," Naminé spoke carefully. "Why?"

"Do you think it's a big deal for me to because of who I am?"

Naminé's expression made Roxas grow suddenly very fond of his food. It was no mystery she saw him as a socially ill-informed infidel more so than not, and when she made it apparent, he morphed into a kicked turtle. The two exchanged looks for several seconds. Roxas' were accompanied by shrugging and flakes of fear, and hers were pokerfaced and laced with disappointment. He was certain Naminé was keeping tabs on anything related to his communal stupid, and he wasn't sure if it was annoying or embarrassing.

"Roxas, you're human, and so are the people in Uptown. There's nothing about the two areas that somehow make them lesser than your or you better than them. You derive from the exact same sperm and egg foundations, and if you want to mingle with Uptown kids, then go for it. You're too smart to think what your mom and dad pay property taxes on defines your social limitations."

"I like the people there better," he admitted. "I don't think I like my friends."

"If you don't think you like them, then they're not your friends to begin with. You don't like the people you associate with is what you're saying. Just because your dad is having an affair with Hayner's mom doesn't mean you're obligated to live with him and be chummy, Roxas. Do what makes you happy, and don't surround yourself with people who make you miserable. It's a waste of your time, and they'll pull you down."

Roxas dragged his tongue along his bottom lip as he stood up to take his bowl to the sink. "Are you happy?"

There was a short pause between them, and he wondered where the audacity to ask such a personal question had derived from, but he had the right. Naminé knew him like the back of her hand, and she coddled his darkest secrets like babies freshly pulled from the womb. She was aware in so many ways, and for once, he wanted to know, too. If she was going to tell him to do exactly as she had done, then there was absolutely no harm in him asking about the outcome. In his mind, he assumed she was miserable, and he wasn't sure if asking her had been an act of maliciousness or if he was being genuine. Roxas wasn't sure what he had done, but he regretted it.

"Yes," Naminé said, evenly. "I'm the happiest I've ever been in my life."

Roxas wordlessly rinsed off his bowl, but for some reason, he was smiling.

* * *

For someone who didn't like his friends, Roxas spent most of his time with them. Aside from Hayner, Olette was the one he periodically found himself going on adventures with, but the good thing about her was how her jaunts were mild. Mild in the stress department, that is. When it came to humiliation, wanting to punch his own dick in an attempt to gain medical leave, or taking a running leap off the top of the Empire State Building, then those departments were expert mode with a game glitch making it impossible to quit without starting over. If he accepted an invitation from Olette, then he had to soothe his nerves beforehand because it was an all-day event. They didn't just go out for lunch so he could listen to gossip poorly veiled by concern. They went out to lunch, spent three hours at a museum, went shopping, and she always spent thirty minutes being indecisive about where they should go to dinner. Sometimes, she claimed she didn't want to be seen, and then other days, she wanted to be seen. In reality, she always wanted to be seen. The only saving grace with Olette was how she was sweet.

"So," Olette's fingers were gripping the wheel of her father's sky blue BMW. "I know what we need to do today. I think it'll benefit us both."

Roxas was waiting for the inevitable. "Any surprises?"

"You would be the person capable of ruining the surprise of me telling you what we're doing is a surprise."

"It wasn't intentional."

She grinned. "It never is with you."

Once she pulled out of the driveway, Roxas watched the world sweep by. Through the dullness that was their town during the middle of the day and onto the main stretch of highway lined with fields of nothingness, Roxas only grew faintly concerned about where she was taking them when the pair pulled off onto a dirt road. Glancing over at Olette, she kept her smile constant when the road led into the woods and through a never ending path of twisted wilderness and summer green trees. Without realizing what he was doing, Roxas was leaned forward and looking around the abrupt change in environment with genuine interest and awe. There were trees scraping the sky, and he had never seen such a multi-hued display of flora before. For a split-second, he wondered if they had been driving for days because there was no way something like untouched wilderness could be close to home.

"There it is! _Finally_!"

Olette's exclamation made Roxas blink out of his haze, and he suddenly realized they were approaching a wide open field with poorly cut grass that was high enough to hit ankles. There were bonfire circles left unlit and speckled about in mass quantities, but Roxas' eyes were drawn to the clash of human beings throwing themselves around beneath scorching sun with barely any clothing on and only stripes of paint dragged across their bodies by fingers and swiftly moving palms. There was music and trunks of cars left open to hold the coolers of beer, water, and food, and Roxas wondered why Olette and brought him to a festival of people he didn't know who were drinking themselves into sloppy messes before the sun had even considered going down.

"Don't look at me like that," she said through laughter when Roxas attempted to ridicule her with a stare. "Hayner would've gotten sloppy drunk and hit on everyone, and Pence just wouldn't have been fun. Who else was I supposed to bring? All of my girlfriends are in Europe with their parents, anyway."

"Who are these people?"

"I'm not really sure." She shrugged as she parked her car beside the ones that weren't being used as makeshift tables. "They all go to the state school, though. They're fun. This is so much more fun than sitting around someone's pool, and you know it. Come on, Roxas. Have fun with me? You're even dressed for it."

Roxas stared himself down and realized he had worn cutoff shorts and Pumas. He had to wonder if she had implanted a chip in his brain and set up the entire situation months in advance because Olette should have known better, but clearly, she didn't. She wasn't letting Roxas go home, and the second she stepped out of the car and yanked off her shirt to reveal a bikini top, he realized there was no going home. Roxas was trapped in a field full of strangers dancing with body paint soaking into their skin, and he could already tell there would be no designated driver.

"Shirt off, Eames!" Olette had morphed into a completely different person, and Roxas wasn't even sure how he was supposed to react as she pushed up his t-shirt until he took it off himself. "You have more clothes on than me, and that's not okay!"

In a rush of being dragged away from the sanctity of her BMW, Roxas found himself shoved near someone's beaten down car where the paint was stacked in tubs. There was absolutely no method to the madness of dragging hands over a friend's body and creating designs with fingertips, and without realizing it, Roxas had fallen under the spell of Olette's smile where she was undeniably happy about the jagged green line across her forehead and the splatters of orange and blue she had managed to toss into Roxas' hair.

"Roxas!" It took Roxas a second to realize who was screaming his name when he began chugging a can of Budweiser beside Olette, but his brain soon clicked and realized it was Demyx. "Fancy seeing you here in all your pasty glory. Have you ever even _tried_ to grace the sun with your presence before now?"

Roxas gave him the finger as he continued chugging because he was pretty certain the beach had given him color. When he was done and Demyx had stopped laughing at him, he spoke up. "I'm a fucking flower."

"Your pretty little friend must have threatened you with dental surgery to get you out here." Demyx smiled at Olette who had wrapped an arm around Roxas' bare waist, and it wasn't until he pointed across the field did he realize someone had artistically drawn a stickman with an impressive endowment on Demyx's back. "There's a lot of water over there, so if you get dehydrated and die it's your fault."

"What's this even for?" Roxas asked before taking another long pull from his drink.

"Would you believe me if I said it's a fundraiser for Leukemia research?"

"Underage drinking and partying until kids are incapable of driving straight?" Roxas shrugged at his own words. "I just thought these foundations had stricter morals."

"Diamond has never believed in conventionality." The taller blond ran his fingers through his sweat dampened mullet. "But this is important to him."

Roxas stopped hard at the mentioning of Axel's last name, and it dawned on him that this was a private fundraiser. Wondering where the head honcho of the entire event was, Roxas scanned the lineup of cars for an ugly KIA Soul, but there was none to be seen. Obviously, Demyx had caught onto his searching stare because he grabbed Roxas' shoulder and used his finger to redirect the kid's vision to the far end of the field.

With olive skin glistening from a combination of sunscreen and sweat, Axel's arms were firmly wrapped around a girl's waist with her back pressed against his chest, and he was spinning her around. When her feet returned to the ground, he fell directly back in time with the group of people surrounding him, and though they were dancing to their own beat and yelling lyrics at each other, each individual had a striking different personality in their movement. For someone so tall and lanky, Axel was surprisingly fluid and absorbed in the moment with the cluster of human bodies that were all inebriated and breathless, and Roxas was captivated.

"Jesus, he's an idiot," Demyx said, but he was smiling. "Are you two staying for the bonfires?"

Olette glanced over at Roxas. "Yeah, totally."

He had almost glared back at her, but before he could even do so, Olette had grabbed Roxas' hand and guided him to the center of the field where a cluster of people were spinning themselves around like children trapped in the bodies of adults. There wasn't an ounce of promiscuity between anyone, and all at once, every person on the grass was best friends with whoever they came in contact with, and names didn't matter. No one knew where everyone lived or what business their families were associated with. No one cared about the brands on anyone's body or where they had purchased their cars. Roxas and Olette were standing in a safe haven where Eames meant nothing, and with the sun kissing their shoulders, the two grabbed each other's hands and coated themselves in the color of unified rhythm, and Roxas took a moment to consider the possibility of genuinely liking Olette.

* * *

_"WE GOT NO MONEY, BUT WE GOT HEART."_

_-Walk the Moon_


	4. Lost Boys

**Chapter Four: Lost Boys**

Someone had punctured his lungs with a bendy straw and puffed him up like a juice pouch. There was an exchange of endearing looks with a girl he claimed to hate only seconds beforehand, and he was dragging is fingers down the sides of her painted hipbones with a peculiar hypersensitivity where he could smell the grass beneath his feet and radiate with the sun's rays piercing his flesh. The scent of sunlight was sweet and thick like the pungent laughter whooshing into his ears, and the in sync words burst his ribcage open like the swinging doors to a restaurant's kitchen. There was organic confetti spraying forth from the in between of every person's pectorals, and Roxas had to wonder if this was humanity. When they were stripped down and given a chance to scream at the top of their lungs with their panting souls, what was revealed was a cluster fuck of wildflowers choking the weeds. There was lavender beneath his skin, and gerberas were sprouting from the tops of Olette's feet as he dragged his fingertips along her flattened stomach.

Axel didn't see Roxas until the blond was zooming down a hill of sludge as if sliding into home base. At first, he believed what he had seen was a drug induced figment of his imagination because he had expected life to make sense, but after considering his life, he decided he should have known better. There was no reason for the blond boy from three nights ago with a stiff upper lip and unrelenting posture to be the very same person covered in paint and river scum, but the second Roxas disappeared into the depths of the river with a splash, Axel paused and took a gratuitous moment to look straight ahead and blink. Of course, this self-indulgence was interrupted by a brunette girl screaming Roxas' name with shrieking laughter and sliding after him at break neck speed. Her laughter rang for several seconds before disappearing into green water, and without thinking, Axel's paint coated skin decided to take on another layer of filth as he initiated the running start to follow.

"The paint is about to run into your eyes." Olette reached out and swept her fingertips along Roxas' eyebrows. "There you go."

A group had decided to go swimming before the sun went down, and there had been a barefoot race through contorted trees and beneath a canopy of swaying leaves. Hands had gripped the base of tree trunks and used them as bases to gain momentum, and Roxas' palms were sticky from sap. The sensation of a shade cooled path and dusty dirt smacking beneath his feet lingered even when he allowed himself to sink beneath water. There he heard nothing, and for split-second, Roxas wondered if being completely submerged was the closest to home he had ever been. Lights flickered behind his closed eyes, and he could still see splotches of sunlight reflecting off sun-kissed skin as bodies weaved through a forest's maze.

Roxas' attention was diverted from her face when another splash caused murky water to rain down. He had been avoiding Axel since arriving, but it was easier said than done when the redhead was the main attraction. The way he articulated his speech and gave every person addressing him his undivided attention was as soulful as it was daunting. When someone touched him, his arms were soon slung over their shoulders, and he never outright laughed, but he was perpetually amused by the conversations he engaged in. Axel was friendly to the point of it being off putting. At least, it was off putting for Roxas. Everyone else practically lathered his presence on their hands, and he was the kind of human being who could cleanse someone with a conversation. Axel was handcrafted soap made with oatmeal and lavender, and Roxas hated himself for comparing another human being to soap, but he had to finish out the metaphor by comparing himself to Victoria's Secret bubble bath. One was both charming and useful. The other was marketed and nonessential.

"Roxas," Axel's voice dragged out the blond's name, and he wondered why he couldn't sound like that. His sex appeal resembled a trigonometry final. "This sort of thing wouldn't have struck me as your jive. Enjoying your time with us lost boys?"

Olette seemed surprised the two knew each other, and Roxas gave her a stare implying it would be in her best interest to refrain from opening her mouth about the entire thing. She pursed her lips in an attempt to bury an inquisitive smile, but she respected him enough to simply stare Axel down. Before she had to pull him aside, Roxas could tell she found him attractive, which was a turnaround when her history with men was evaluated.

"It's not bad." He shrugged only to immediately wonder why he tried to talk to other people because it was all fake. He was nothing but a piece of plastic that couldn't inflect its own speech, and he was brainwashed. Roxas wanted to eat his own teeth and choke because dying right then would have been significantly less embarrassing than consciously existing. "Sort of unorthodox, though."

"We're a bunch of heretics." Axel swiped a clump of leaves off Roxas' shoulder. "A pack of wolves rolling in the mud and abandoning reservations, but I appreciate you two coming out. Who's your pretty girlfriend?"

Roxas was beat to the punch by Olette. "I'm Olette, and he's _not_ my boyfriend."

"And she says so with swift adamancy," Axel said, a corner of his mouth quirked upward. "Olette, please tell me why you're obstinate about not being Roxas' girlfriend. There wasn't even hesitation there."

"Oh," she glanced over at Roxas with a sheepish smile. "We've been friends for years. It's just platonic."

Axel's laugh was dry, but his friendly demeanor remained. "Word, but you seemed offended."

Put on the spot, she faintly parted her lips, and her mind was running a mile a minute. "I don't like it when people assume I'm dating someone just because we're the opposite sex and together."

"Which is valid frustration, but handling it as gauche as you just did can send mixed signals to other people. What if I had been interested in Roxas, and he had been mutually interested in me, but because of your apparent abhorrence to the notion of being his girlfriend, you sent the signal implying he has some defect? There's a completely invalidated red flag that doesn't do anyone any favors."

"Roxas _isn't_ gay."

Axel released a low whistle before using his hand as a visor against the setting sun. Looking toward the sky, he pointed and was seemingly following something as it fell far off in the distance. "That ball didn't get knocked out of the park. It flew into the sun."

"When do the bonfires start?" It was Roxas' awful way of diverting the conversation from its previous topic. "Right when the sun sets?"

The redhead dropped his hand. "When the sun sets we play hide and seek in the dark."

Olette made an incredulous expression. "That actually sounds horrifying."

"It's one of those games that can get too intense."

Roxas furrowed his eyebrows, but he didn't have it in him to express his discomfort with the idea. More people were rolling down the muddy hill in order to wash off the itchy paint flakes, and it wasn't long before Axel's attention was sucked up by all the tanned college girls with their paint speckled messy buns and waterproof mascara. They hounded him, and Axel flirted back until his pick of the litter had her legs wrapped around his waist, and his hands were doing untold things beneath the river water. By her clipped laughter and tightening grip on his slickened shoulders, Roxas knew Axel's hand had slipped beneath the bikini bottoms. She was a brunette with smoldering coffee colored eyes, and Axel Diamond was finger fucking her while he simultaneously flirted with her best friends. Roxas had never felt as small in his entire life.

"Let's go over to Demyx," Olette suggested, and she tugged Roxas away.

* * *

Hide and seek brought back memories of nursery school and indulgent nannies, but when Demyx and Roxas found themselves lined up beside one another at the edge of the woods, those memories rapidly dissipated. Olette's attention had been caught by one of Axel's friends, and so there he was on his own about to run blind into a forest he didn't know jack shit about. Obviously, it was a terrible idea, but he was feeding off other people's excitement, which was making him reconsider every alarm blaring in front of his face. Even though everyone else was looking at the two picked it men as if they were carrying axes rusted over by previous victim's blood, the scent of anticipation was riper than a steak left out in the summer sun. That was why, when the okay to hide was given, no one hesitated to turn on their phone's flashlight application.

Roxas crept through the woods with a breathless follow up. The initial running had died down, and soon everyone had fanned out into the designated hiding area. There was a small patch of woods considered fair game, but the farther he crept along, the larger it seemed to become. Maybe it was the darkness, but there was a significant disconnection from the rest of the crowd approaching him as his soccer shoes crunched down high grass and twigs. There was supposed to be a small field beyond the woods, but he never came across it, and though he understood he needed to turn back, the blond couldn't bring himself to stop walking. The darkness was tunneling around him, and he was being drawn toward whatever was at the end of the woodlands. Even when the trees grew dense, Roxas didn't look back, and he stopped giving the time any attention. There was nothing significant there for him anyway. If he died and returned to the earth like compost, then maybe he could exist in peace as the nutrients for mangled tree roots.

The woods evaporated, and there was a moonlit path sprawled out to greet him as he stepped free from the consuming darkness. Sandy dirt erupted around his ankles with each step forward, and Roxas soon realized the path led to a straight drop off overlooking the river and distant forests on the other side. He was a hundred feet above jagged rocks meant for gutting the ill-willed such as him, and everything could be seen. For once, the water resembled midnight blue, but the longer he stared, the blacker it became until he believed the concept of atoms and molecules had shifted and the element oblivion had been created. If he jumped, then there would be the absoluteness of nothing. There was something calming about not being able to see the bottom, so he continued to stare downward. He wished he could tilt his head back and savor the stars spreading across miles of seeable night sky. There was an unending universe above him, but he couldn't bring himself to appreciate anything but the hopeful ending below, and he wanted to pour his organs out on dirt. He would become food for the maggots, and he would be useful.

He sat down with his legs draped over the edge, and he wanted to go missing. Sometimes, he wondered if missing would stop the urge to disconnect from his body entirely. Digging his fingertips into bathroom grout wasn't as satisfying as he attempted to tell himself. The Ziploc bags piling beneath a box spring and beneath his hangers draped with designer labels were mocking him, and he was alone. No matter who was seemingly tangible Roxas could dig his nails beneath skin and pull open the curtains to reveal the ethereal reality. Not a single human being he had met to date was capable of rooting into, and the constant solitude was draining. He was the only plant in the garden in a clay pot, and the world ridiculed him for it.

"That is the worst hiding place I have ever seen."

Roxas exhaled so hard he had to scramble to grip the ground, and though he believed his equilibrium evened out enough to remain seated where he was, a pair of hands shoved themselves beneath his armpits and yanked him backwards. His heart was still racing when he was freed of the grip, and for the first time since he had appeared in the clearing, he tilted his head back.

"Seriously," Axel said while leaned over Roxas with his hands planted on his thighs and an arched eyebrow. "Were your eyes genetically engineered in a lab? Were there some Joseph Mengele injections done after he failed to successfully sew you to your fraternal twin?"

"You've seen me without a shirt on all day." Roxas had always believed his appearance to be lackluster. Blond hair and blue eyes were the biggest cliché known to man, and it had fallen out of vogue long before he was born. It wasn't a matter of finding himself ugly. He was just plain. "Notice any earthworm scars?"

"Unlike _someone_," he began as he sat down beside Roxas. "I lean toward refraining from staring at people. Otherwise, it tends to leave them self-conscious, vulnerable, and paranoid."

Roxas decided gazing straight ahead was in his best interest. "I wouldn't know."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but even if someone was staring at you, then you wouldn't realize it because you're one of those people who left his awareness on the dark side of the moon."

Trying to prove him wrong, Roxas turned to look at Axel with a listless expression, but he lasted five seconds before looking away again. Instantly, he was willing away the burn of his stare and internally squirming. The only thing racing through Roxas' fogged brain was variations of _holy fuck, how did he catch onto that_? It wasn't as if Axel had any reason to focus in on him. Then again, Roxas took a moment to consider the possibility of canceling out someone's suicide giving two people the right to invest a smidgen of interest in each other. He wished that wasn't earnest justification for tolerating Axel's presence, and he wished he actually felt obligated to stick around with Axel Diamond, but that was cruel fate for him. He actually _liked_ Axel's word vomit.

"Are you a seeker right now?"

"Diverting, excellent, but no, someone tripped, so we took a quick intermission. Olette couldn't find you and asked me to look since I know the area, and I figured you of all people would be somewhere where falling to your death was an option." Axel suddenly exhaled, and it was almost a sigh. "I used to take walks here with my little sister. Back when spending time with me was not only an option but a privilege."

A conversation rooted in their personal lives was a nauseating concept, so Roxas averted the topic. "You have a lot of freckles."

He had never wanted to kill himself with as much vigorousness in his entire life, and Axel had not signed up for the sympathy boat. The secondhand embarrassment on Axel's part had the redhead suddenly pinching the bridge of his nose and sighing, and Roxas wondered why he stifled conversation to the degree he did with Axel and Axel only. Typically, he could bullshit his way out of a wet paper bag, but there he was making himself out to be possibly the most socially inept human on the face of the planet. He was one more stupid gesture away from signing away his life and resorting to redoing his parent's basement, so he could fester in a sunless universe of self-loathing. He would spend his days masturbating to soft core lesbian porn in hopes of finally finding boobs attractive, crying his self to sleep over marathons of film adaptations of Nicholas Sparks novels, and eventually, he would become the sole proprietor of a lucrative sex shop specializing in the recreation of animal genitalia. His bank account would flourish, but his dick would be perpetually flaccid.

"I like this spot," Roxas said after his flighty pity party. "You've really been here before?"

"You've found one of my favorite spots on this property, but it's far from the designated hiding area. Why did you even keep walking? It should have been obvious you were in the wrong area after fifteen minutes of walking."

He furrowed his eyebrows. "I walked that long?"

"Depending on your pace. I was gunning it here because it's dark, and if you don't know the area, then you're at high risk of hitting a drop off. Wouldn't want to have to send a canine squad out here to find your corpse." Axel suddenly stopped and stared ahead for a moment. He was contemplating. "The day I first met you on the bridge I came here."

"Why would you come here after almost jumping off a bridge? I didn't want to be anywhere two feet above ground for weeks. My front porch still gives me anxiety attacks."

He released a sound Roxas mistakenly thought was a half-finished laugh. "Just because you interrupted me on a bridge doesn't mean you cancelled out my need for self-annihilation. You're a cute kid. I'll give you that, but that's a super ego if I've ever seen one. Be careful. First, you'll believe the world orbits around you, and before you know it, there'll be an entire nonexistent solar system. What a letdown that would be when you grow up enough to realize absolutely no one gives a shit about your thoughts or feelings."

"That's caustic," Roxas said, suddenly smiling.

"I disagree. It's universal. It'd be far more impactful if it wasn't the norm."

"Are you sure you're not just bitter?"

That was when he genuinely laughed, and the way it seemed to vivify the sky had Roxas wondering if the world truly could revolve around someone. "I'm an optimistic realist."

"An optimistic realist who tried to jump of a bridge." For some reason, Roxas couldn't break his smile. "Make more sense while you're at it."

"I was optimistic I'd feel better, and realistically-once I hit those rocks-I'd die and not feel, period."

Roxas quirked up an eyebrow. "Then why are you still here?"

"If one thing hasn't changed about you since we first met, then it's how rude you are."

"I've never claimed not to be." Roxas' features softened. "Why did you come here?"

"To finish the job." Axel was so matter-of-fact Roxas wasn't sure if he should find it off putting. "Because the odds of a blond high school kid making weird noises behind me were improbable, and I wouldn't feel guilty about scarring someone."

"But you _didn't_ finish the job."

"Let's take a moment to praise your perceptiveness."

Roxas ignored that. "Why not?"

There was an extended pause between them, and he carefully watched as Axel rolled his jaw in thought. For a few seconds, he didn't think the redhead would even respond to his question, which was understandable. Roxas was perfectly intrusive when he wanted to be, but he wasn't ignorant enough to believe people would always succumb to reciprocating his jerk wad inquiries.

"I don't know."

Axel stood up, and Roxas watched with a look of interest until a hand extended for him to take. Arching an eyebrow, he reluctantly allowed Axel to yank him to his feet, and for a split-second, he wondered if hands were capable of growing moist within three seconds because it definitely felt that way by the time he was flat on his feet. Rapidly letting go of the other's hand, Roxas smoothed it through his blond locks and exhaled before removing his cellphone to check. There were four text messages, and he had no intentions of reading any of them until he unconsciously did so. He hated his phone. It regularly connected him to every human being he hated and without thinking about it, Roxas abruptly turned around and launched the piece of technology off the cliff with an unnecessarily hard throw.

"That must have been one hell of a text message."

His heart was hammering. "I still want to jump. If you weren't here, then I probably would've jumped."

"Then why don't you? I won't tell anyone."

"Because even if I fucking did I'd always come back."

He kept his back to Axel, and he exhaled before walking away from the cliff backwards. His chest was heaving, and he wasn't sure where the adrenaline had derived from, but he liked the idea of someone who could keep secrets. When he was beside Axel, he turned around and began striding towards the woods with a set of fingers dragging along the back of his neck. Eyes were lit by anger, and he wanted to shove his hand down his esophagus. He'd rip out the slimy tissue with saliva slickened fingers caked with blood, and no one would find his body until it was a shrine to the mushrooms and returning to the universe as energy, but that was the problem. He didn't want to return, and he didn't want to be constant. Everything within his being was desperate to reverse physics, but he couldn't buy the natural world. It was his life, and he would never control it.

By time he could see the field, the bonfires had been lit, and people were doing their best to pitch the tents they should have bothered with hours before. Axel's footsteps had been behind him the entire time, which was why he wasn't shocked when the man caught his upper-arm and yanked him back against his chest. It was too close for Roxas, and his internal organs shifted to the point he thought he would vomit on the forest floor. That or his shoes, but it didn't really matter by that point. His Pumas were waterlogged and caked in dirt.

"Don't run out there like I just violated you."

"You're the fucking sun on earth to those people." Roxas jerked his arm out of Axel's grip. "That's the last thing they'll think."

Axel lingered for a second because Roxas had done him the favor of stunning him with his abrupt emotional shift. "Hey, you vertically impaired urchin, I just went looking for you because your friend was concerned. You don't have to start attacking me because you're carting around an impressive chemical imbalance you clearly can't handle for shit."

"Don't talk like you fucking know what's wrong with me."

"You just told me you would have jumped off a cliff had I not shown up." Axel's tone was collected. In fact, it was so collected Roxas wanted to kill him. He himself rarely got upset, and it annoyed him when he was being the idiot while his company remained unaffected. "Maybe I have a higher standard for sanity than you do, but signs point to tilted scales."

"And you have room to talk?"

"Did I say _anything_ about being perfectly in check?" Axel exhaled, and he was clearly done with the moment. "Your dramatics are Oscar worthy. I'll remember to wear my Versace on the red carpet after you're announced as one of this year's most promising nominees. Pretty, blue-eyed blond capable of acting to the point of making himself cry. Headlining all the Arts and Entertainment sections of the papers with his angry little mug because Roxas Eames is perpetually in character. Except, I'm beginning to think this could be _out _of character for you, so sober up, sunshine, the curtain is about to lift."

Axel pushed on his shoulder blades, and the pair appeared together as if nothing had been said between them. Olette was the first to approach Roxas, and she cupped his face with a quick smile. She smelled like beer, and someone would eventually take advantage of her. Roxas wish he had the ability to genuinely care about whether or not someone ended up between her legs that night, but he had been drained of all his potential to give her any second thought. He wanted whiskey, and he wanted an entire bag of marshmallows worth of s'mores because then he could hide behind someone's tent and make himself feel better with a diminishing gag reflex. He needed something to come up and leave him hollowed out because there hadn't been much accomplishment that day, and there weren't many ways for him to gain satisfaction.

He downed the cheap whiskey Demyx offered him beside a fireplace, and there was a girl with short red hair making endless one-sided conversation with him. She introduced herself as Kairi, and Roxas had seen bigger tits on a man, but he liked the way she articulated her words with her heavy German accent. She was bright with an intelligent edge to her speech, and when Axel meandered past the blanket they were sitting on together, she nonchalantly mentioned how Axel was her ex-boyfriend.

"We had great chemistry," she said with a shrug, and Roxas was hooked by her rough handling on the English language. He wanted her to talk him into a coma. "Very intelligent, good looking, charming. He's the kind of man my family would've loved for me to marry, but he's so…"

Kairi lifted her hands and pointed to the sky. She couldn't find the word for it, and Roxas nodded in understanding. She dropped her hands and shrugged before making him his third s'more and handing it off. He watched the corner of her mouth drop to a frown, and it surprised him when she continued talking about Axel. Her interest in the topic had initially seemed casual.

"He's a boy who lives in the stars, but because of that, we're still friends." Kairi took the bottle of whiskey when it was passed to her and tipped it back without bothering to use her coke as a chaser. "He loves vigorously for someone who doesn't love himself, and even when I called it off, he shifted into being like my brother. It's nice to have family like him when you're so far from your own. How do you know Axel? I saw you two talking earlier, and he ran into the woods the second your little girlfriend got worried. Like, he sprinted."

Roxas was quick to deduce her openness had to do with the booze, but he wasn't good enough of a person to stray from the subject matter. "Chance encounter, I guess. I don't think we mesh well, though."

"You'd be the first to say that." She sucked marshmallow goo off her thumb. "He's obscenely patient with people."

"There's a first for everything," he said as she handed him the bottle.

"This is true." Kairi paused, thoughtful. "You're cute. Want to sleep in my tent?"

He furrowed his eyebrows at the question while in mid-drink. "Okay?"

They downed a couple more shots before getting to their feet, and the ground shifted. The fact of the matter was Kairi was attractive, down to earth, and she was almost frighteningly nice. Roxas could only imagine how well she had worked with Axel, and he wasn't sure why it made him nauseous knowing she and the redhead weren't dating. He had a feeling there was more to the story, but as they walked away from the bonfires, he wasn't awake enough to care. His mental placement had definitely bought better seats, which was why, when Kairi and he passed by Axel while stepping into her tent, he didn't think much of the inquisitive look he shot their way. Roxas had spent his teenage years in a realm where he and Hayner drank themselves sick and shared girls who were more than willing to simultaneously push down expensive panties bought by their daddies' credit cards and suck cock. Their glossed lips parted, and Roxas knew too well the discomfort of wiping sticky glitter off his balls while wondering why girls put it on thick before inevitably climbing onto the sink of a bathroom. Hayner always dated them so they wouldn't tell the world they'd been used for pornographic ideals, and Roxas only spoke to them when in public.

Roxas fucked Kairi because she had a flat chest. Her ribs were branches beneath skin he could have dug under without any fear of her noticing, and the sense of control had him salivating. Her body begged for fat cells and trembled beneath his trailing palms when she showed him where she needed his hand to be, and he fell in love with the way she said his name each time her spine slid upward along the slippery sleeping bag. When he took the necessary five seconds to pretend he genuinely cared about whether or not she felt good, she choked on his name, and god damn, he wished she would shut he fuck up and stop _gurgling_. Over and over again she stroked his ego, and Roxas was glad there wasn't lighting in the tent because his expression remained indifferent to her responses. There was only so much pretending he could handle when his attraction to her was the equivalent to a child's fascination with a shiny trinket on a high shelf. He wanted her for conversations and not a hole to fuck. Those were the people who went away. He didn't want Kairi to leave.

She asked him to bust on her face, which he did with haphazard enthusiasm because it was overdone. Girls had this misconception he enjoyed that kind of domineering behavior, and maybe if it wasn't like Adele on the radio, then he would've still gotten off. He gripped her hair until she whimpered, and he gritted his teeth as he released on her pretty mug that was still speckled with paint. They were all nature scum and coated in the scent of human, which as an afterthought was enough to make his stomach churn. He decided to build alters dedicated to the individuals who had invented the condom because they were the only reason he was going to be sleeping with any peace of mind that night.

"How old are you?" Kairi asked after they'd settled on her sleeping bag still naked.

It was humid out, he was sticky, and he hated his life. "Eighteen."

Much to Roxas' displeasure, she released a shrieking laugh. "Wait. Wait_._ _What_?"

"I'm not even a college freshman yet," he said monotonously.

"I'm mortified, horrified, but I _think_ I'm impressed?" Kairi placed a hand over her chest and sighed through a fit of giggling. "Oh-my goodness. Well, we won't be doing _that_ again. I don't want to get myself locked up in the states because I slept with a young boy during university."

"It's legal," he grumbled.

"Not in the realm of my standards." Kairi rolled to face him. "But we should be friends. You're a strange boy and I like that about you. It's your eyes, I think? Yes, that's what it is. Sort of like – oh, hell, how do I even describe it? People who scream with their eyes when they don't speak? Loud, so loud they can't be silenced by a locked jaw."

"Thanks, I think."

Maybe it was because she didn't find him impressive enough to fawn over, but when Kairi murmured an invitation to play laser tag with her friends the next weekend, he found himself accepting. If Roxas was to be honest with his self, he had no idea why he thought exchanging numbers with her—though, she had to write hers on his wrist by cell phone light—in a whirlwind blur of fatigue seemed like a good idea, but he did. The concept was smooth on his conscience, and even when he woke up before Kairi and stumbled out of the tent with the need to piss until his bladder shriveled into a raisin, he couldn't find a single lick of regret from the night before. The slightly demeaning sex had been decent enough to leave him in good spirits because there wasn't going to be a lick of annoyance steaming from what had happened. Kairi didn't want him, he didn't want Kairi, and they were jumping off into platonic waters. The method hadn't been conventional, but stranger things had happened.

"And the almighty douchelord steps from the confines of his temporary castle." Demyx's laughter followed his words, and Roxas looked over to see him attempting to open what appeared to be a canister of instant coffee. "I can't open this. I don't know why. I think this could be science, but I'm not positive."

Roxas headed over to him and reached out for the container. "Let me see."

"Yes, your majesty."

Rolling his eyes as Demyx bowed, he cross-examined the container only to sigh. "You didn't take the plastic off. Did you even sleep?"

"I would've slept but there were these two ostriches in the tent beside me squawking while in the midst of procreation."

Roxas' expression faltered. "_Oh_."

"But that's fine. The beauty of fertilizing eggs is something I shouldn't hold ill will for."

"Have you seen Olette?"

"Frolicking about with Diamond somewhere. I'm pretty sure he brought her a latte this morning, which was a weird gesture. I wasn't sure if he was subtly mocking her or not. That's typically not his bag, so knowing him, it was genuine."

As if on cue, Olette popped out of the tent only a couple feet away with a Starbucks cup in hand and her panties in the other. Roxas greeted her with a dull expression she was quick to grasp onto as the signal for them to leave. Roxas didn't want to see Axel ever again, and the faster they left, then the sooner he could forget he had ever slept with Kairi or admitted to a complete stranger he was interested in dying, again.

* * *

Laser tag didn't cross Roxas' mind again until the day of, and the only reason he even remembered he had agreed to play with Kairi and her friends was because she sent him a short text with the time. At first, he didn't recognize her number because he hadn't bothered to mark it down before showering. Roxas had assumed it was forever lost. Not only that, but it took him two days to muster up the energy to go out and buy another smartphone, so he had been cut off from not just Kairi's possible text messages, but everyone. Those few days had been luxurious, and even his father couldn't openly complain about it because he had lied and claimed it was stolen. Attempting to track it had been a failure, which was how Roxas was certain the phone had been annihilated upon landing.

"Of all the people."

Roxas had been sulking in his air conditioned Mercedes with no music playing and his new iPhone in hand. Before him was a towering three story building he had passed multiple times since it had opened five years beforehand, but due to the juvenile neon sign and heinous lime and turquoise cement walls, he had never bothered to go inside. Just sitting in front of the fortress left Roxas faintly embarrassed, and he couldn't figure out why. It was the exact same feeling he got when his mother made him go shopping with her. He wasn't just out of his element. His style was being cramped, and it didn't matter how interesting he found Kairi because her company just didn't seem worth running around in sweat stained laser tag suits like a complete idiot. Roxas couldn't stand feeling stupid. Even skateboarding in front of other people put him off his element.

Jumping in his seat, he recognized the voice and face as Xigbar, and Roxas would've been lying had he said he'd expected the man to be there. Standing in all his black jeans and V-neck glory, Xigbar was beside two individuals he didn't recognize. Upon shoving his phone into the glove compartment and opening his door, they were quick to introduce themselves as Marluxia and Luxord. They were both dressed in black, and it was then Roxas realized all three of them were matching. Wondering if he was about to be pulled into the Matrix, he swallowed spit and pocketed his keys.

"Kairi invited me," he said, assuming they were there with her.

"Could've sworn you'd be Diamond's bitch." Xigbar slung his arms around Roxas' shoulders and began walking him toward the front of the building. "Have you ever played laser tag before?"

"Once before, when I was younger."

"Well, forget about the kid shit, Eames, because this isn't elementary."

Marluxia tilted down into Roxas' line of vision before speaking. "There's been blood."

"And carpet burns," Luxord added.

Xigbar hissed. "The fucking carpet burns. Lost half my team to it."

The group entered the gaudy establishment, and Roxas watched as the three men swiped their holographic membership cards. Wondering why anyone would need membership cards for a laser tag fun house, Roxas arched an eyebrow and went to the counter to pay for a daily pass. He found it weird how they waited for him, and as they talked amongst themselves about strategy, Roxas was having a difficult time believing they meant laser tag. There was nothing worthy of military terminology in a building containing circular pink tables with amateur graffiti spritzed across the tops and cheap yellow carpeting stained by Gatorade and cola. He continued to tell himself Xigbar and Luxord were referring to the kills from videos games or maybe even paintball, but as they approached a pair of looming grey doors modeled after gothic architecture, he began second guessing himself.

"Roxas, you're on our team!" Kairi ran up to him, and she was already suited up in her skin tight laser tag gear that looked like a vest ripped straight from a Star Trek props closet. Her short hair was yanked back into a high ponytail, and she was holding her gun that had seemingly been modeled after an AK47. Instead of a black shirt, she was wearing a murky green, and Roxas nearly squinted at the choice in color from distaste. "But our captain isn't here yet."

Waving goodbye to Xigbar as Kairi took his hand and led him to the wall where all the suits were hanging, she rapidly helped him get fitted into one while rambling off the rules of laser tag. All Roxas could gather from her jibber jabber was that he didn't want to get into the line of vision of anyone unless completely necessary, and wherever the chunky bits of machinery were on his suit were his vulnerabilities. The gun tracked his rank and shots, and as she gave his hip straps a final tight pull, he had the lingering suspicion she had signed him up for guerrilla warfare. Someone was going to die beyond those walls, and when a gust of smoke from dry ice billowed free from the cracks, he knew it would be him. Roxas' death was inevitable, and there would be absolutely no sympathy for him from anyone.

"Who's our captain?"

Kairi opened her mouth to answer only for her attention to be stolen by the sound the building's front door opening. Immediately, she waved, and when Roxas glanced over, he felt his intestines drop from his butt and onto the daffodil carpet. Dressed in what appeared to be customized laser tag gear, Axel strode toward them with Demyx to his left and another individual with an impressive blue devil lock to his right. There was a bird painted across Axel's chest piece, and Roxas could have sworn he had stepped into a shitty remake of the Road Warrior. ACDC's TNT was blaring, there were explosions in the background amongst a desert scape, and each stride was in slow motion. Everyone had gone from jovial to tense, and the only person who dared to move was Xigbar. People were shitting themselves, each person was spontaneously wearing a pair of Doc Martens, and the blond had gone from Roxas to a drafted soldier meant for the trench. He would never marry, and his sperm would go to waste.

Xigbar met Axel halfway, and the two looked each other over appraisingly. At first, Roxas had been convinced them doing so had solely been for scrutiny, but the sly smiles they exchanged made both of his brows creep toward his hairline. Xigbar was eyeing Axel's lazily unconcealed navel exposed from where his armor had raised a corner of his shirt, and Axel's eyes narrowed in on the tightness of Xigbar's pants. It was terrible, everyone was mortified, and Roxas regretted not jumping off that cliff when he'd had a chance. Kairi coughed back a laugh. She had noticed, but she wasn't going to break the atmosphere to clue Roxas in. She wasn't always compassionate, and Roxas was yet to know this about her.

"Purple Fox," Axel said in greeting.

"Peregrine Falcon," the other returned, though his speech was rather clipped.

"Where's your customary armor?"

"Left it on your bedroom floor."

There was a collective gasp, and Roxas wasn't sure if his life was real. Nothing going on around him was reality, and he was simply dreaming. He absolutely, positively refused to believe Xigbar and Axel had ever had any kind of relations beyond friendship. Even if it had been vigorous friendship where they masturbated in the same room together and didn't talk about it the next day, then that was fine. Roxas wouldn't see it as any other way. If he accepted it, then his brain would implode and leak from his ears.

"I'm going to wreck your ass," Axel grumbled as he prodded Xigbar's chest with the barrel of his gun.

"Plowed yours last night."

Kairi abruptly wrapped her arm around Roxas' waist before leaning over to whisper in his ear. "Another reason Axel Diamond and I did not work out. He's a big ole gay."

"What is this?" Roxas couldn't believe he had mustered up the strength to speak. "Forbidden lovers at war?"

"If only it were that simple."

Axel clearly hadn't expected Xigbar to go as far as he had, which was why he dropped his previous demeanor before speaking again. "You said you wouldn't say anything."

"Maybe if you showed your ass less, then it wouldn't be as obvious."

Demyx coughed into his gloved hand before leaning closer to Axel. "It's really obvious, man."

Backing up as his team captain strode toward the doors, Axel barked out an obscure set of orders at Demyx who gave the man a reluctant thumb up. The two began murmuring to one another for an entire minute before calling a team meeting, and Roxas decided he was in hell. The past two weeks had been proof enough. He must have crashed the Mercedes after graduation, and he had been descending through the circular layers of hell for nearly three months. This was the final level. This was Satan's lair, and there would be absolutely no mercy.


	5. Darlings

_**Chapter Five: Darlings **_

"Purple Fox, fifty-two!" This was followed by a single hand rapidly signing, and Roxas was positive Axel had just told him to get on birth control via American Sign Language.

Drenched in black light that illuminated every stain on his black jeans, Roxas' back was pressed against a carpeted wall, and his brow was drenched in the kind of sweat that reminded him he hadn't worked out during summer. He was panting, and when he was certain Axel had given up on him complying with his asinine hand waving, Roxas abruptly tilted his head back. There was a quick intake of air only to be followed by Axel screaming profanity in English mangled by frustration, but Roxas didn't look over. A pair of long legs appeared above his head only to be swiftly shadowed by a long ponytail, and before Roxas realized what was happening, the blond was making singular eye contact with Xigbar. A short-lived stare off ensued, Roxas clenched down on his gun, and with a cocky smirk, Xigbar aimed and pulled the trigger. As fast as it had happened, Xigbar disappeared behind another wall doing what Roxas was quite certain had been an artfully performed barrel roll. At that, his chest piece began furiously blinking, and the blond was certain Axel had blacklisted him.

"You're incompetent, Flaxen Turtle!""

Axel had christened Roxas as Flaxen Turtle before they had stepped into the gym sock of a war zone, and he wasn't exactly sure what Axel was trying to imply by referring to him as such, but he had a feeling there had been some form of a personal attack masked there. In response to being called out, Roxas shot Axel the kind of glare of distaste the man returned before abruptly rising to his feet. Due to how lanky Diamond's legs were, Roxas had been caught off guard by the smoothness of the aforementioned change in stance. With furrowed brows he watched as Axel cackled, shot Luxord down with a merciless sweep of trigger pulls, and slid smoothly across the sweat dampened carpet. Suddenly lying on his side beside Roxas, Axel managed to roll himself over into a crouched position that was so animalistic Roxas had wondered if he'd blinked too long to fully catch the sequence of movements.

"I'm assuming Kairi invited you here on a drunken whim." Axel's words were surprisingly smooth as he leaned forward. Their faces were too close, and Roxas watched a single bead of sweat drip down into what Roxas abruptly realized were sideburns. Axel had _sideburns_. "You don't want to be here."

"I don't mind," Roxas murmured, which was a complete lie.

"Think about it this way," he began with a subtle drawl Roxas was a little too hypersensitive to. "If I don't win this, then I'm stuck scrubbing the fucking bathroom grout tomorrow. Do you know when we last scrubbed anything in my house?"

He shook his head. "No."

"Me either."

Setting the gun aside, Axel reached out and pushed his gloved fingers through Roxas' matted hair before leaning forward. Abruptly, he gripped the hair a little harder than Roxas had expected, and the two stared each other down for what was far too long in Roxas' holy opinion. He wasn't sure if this was a legitimate warning from Axel or if he was taking a joke too far, but it didn't matter because the teenager had accidentally sucked in the kind of breath one might if they were a millisecond away from taking it over a kitchen table. Roxas hated himself, Axel had noticed, and he was desperately trying to remember exactly how people tied nooses. For someone who periodically contemplated jumping to his death Roxas wasn't particularly versed in the ways of suicide. He suddenly recognized this glaring flaw.

"The point is," Axel began as he let Roxas go. He was looking particularly smug. "If I lose because you're just sitting around, then we're going to have a serious fucking problem, Eames. I'm a man of consensual violence, so don't think I'll rip you limb from limb."

"And to think I thought you were charming."

Looking at Axel's smile was like staring into the sun. "I _am _charming, _but_ I'm also not into being royally fucked over or losing."

"I don't have the experience to _not_ fuck up."

Axel hunkered down even more, and he suddenly reached over for his set aside gun. Around them were the blood curdling screams of individuals being taken down by lights that didn't mean much, and Roxas wondered how a group of twenty-year-olds had managed to hype themselves up to the point of taking laser tag seriously. He was caught up in the misconception that twenty automatically meant adulthood, and approaching nineteen seemed like some end of the world he couldn't completely place. He feigned adulthood as if it was going out of style, and on his worst days, he genuinely believed he had hit some formative peak in his existence. There was so much to learn, but he still understood the workings of the universe as if it contained the complexities of a disregarded coloring book. Stay within the lines and he would be big man on campus. Being fascinated by the jagged strokes of waxy hues was no longer endearing, and he had mistaken added responsibility for a final will.

"You're overthinking a kid game." At that, Axel stuck out his arm lightning fast and Marluxia tripped over his balled up fist. Landing face first onto sandpaper carpeting, Roxas winced the second he watched the man skid forward. "Kick some ass with me."

Axel was on his feet as if his was spine on fire, and he planted a boot on the base of Marluxia's vertebrae before pointing his gun at the back of that rose tinted head. There was a fleeting moment when Roxas wondered where exactly Axel would shoot him, but much to his horror and subtle disgust, the redhead abruptly kicked him in the ribs until he rolled. The two were abruptly in an awkward standoff where Marluxia had grappled for his gun and Axel was pointing his directly at the other man's chest. There were sneers and teeth gnashing, and Roxas wondered if they were going to simultaneously take each other out or if Axel would just reach down and nail him in the crotch.

_Wait—hold on. _Roxas scrambled for his gun, and without thinking about what his limbs were doing, shoved Axel aside so he was sent straight onto his ass. With surprise still lingering on Marluxia's symmetrical face, Roxas shot his opponent's chest piece, and there was this surprisingly strong sensation of satisfaction as the spectrum of colors whirled across Marluxia's torso. The citrus colors illuminated his oceanic eyes that typically reflected nothing but darkened sandy floors, and he sucked in a quick breath that was interrupted by Axel snatching his bicep and jetting them toward a ramp. There was nothing but white noise as the pair shot through the semi-darkness and smoggy air, and when Axel shoved him into what looked to be a crawl space beneath the second level ramping, Roxas could have sworn they had done this before. He wasn't stupid enough to believe he had previously played laser tag with Axel Diamond, but the flash of blood red hair and pumping adrenaline carried a saddening familiarity to it that he could only chalk up as a severe bout of déjà vu.

Though he was lanky, Axel managed to work his way into the space with Roxas, and their legs were suddenly twisted into a brainteaser more complex than a Rubik's cube. The major difference being they couldn't pull squared stickers off their thighs and match up the colors in the name of elementary bragging rights. Roxas could have turned the concept into a flesh peeling scenario with a stultifying amount of B movie gore, but he decided against dwelling on making their bodies into a human puzzle. Instead, he settled on attempting to fight off the cramps in his thighs and doing his honorary best not to accidentally kick Axel in the gonads. Axel was bigger than him by a long shot, and he could only imagine the suffering he would fall victim to if he nailed him between the legs with an Ann Demeulemeester boot. He had a feeling he would be Crisco-ing aforesaid boot out of his ass, which was why he let Axel do the moving.

"What'd you do last night?" Axel asked as he peered into the fogged over room where people were still rolling around like Vietnam was clogging their veins.

"Does it really matter?" He had to admit he had definitely seen less angst driven replies in his day. "I mean, _why_?"

"You're a fucking enigma. That's _why_."

"An _enigma_?" Roxas managed to snort. "I sort of like that."

"It's an underhanded way of describing you as really fucking alien. Roxas Eames is The Man Who Fell to Earth."

"I can't be doing too badly if I'm David Bowie."

"Well, I was referring to the novel by Walter Tevis, so don't flatter yourself into a coma. Trust me; if you were _anything_ like Bowie, then we'd have already had our intergalactic wedding on Mars."

"Never liked his Ziggy Stardust stuff."

Axel cut him a look of disgust, but he decided against touching Roxas' nearly unforgivable error. "Anyway, you contemptible shrew, time to make like Jeopardy and answer the question."

"I drank."

"By yourself?"

"I have no obligation to answer that."

"Which is a blatant way of not saying you did, which is also miserable. You're sardonic to the core, Roxas."

He pursed his lips. "I appreciate that."

"I'm just calling them as I see them. I like to believe I'm doing the world a small service because I feel like everyone else is pointing out the wrong obviousness."

"You're justifying rudeness, again."

Axel laughed and Roxas realized there was something whimsical and surreal about the way the sound tore from his throat. There was genuine happiness, but then there wasn't, and when he glanced away and Axel's smile eased, Roxas sought out a slipup. He wanted a falter to let him know Axel was a faker because jadedness wasn't a good enough reason for Roxas to accept the redhead's suicidal disposition. People capable of looking continuously happy when death was fresh on the mind made him uncomfortable, and he wondered if it was the norm for people to be the way Axel was. He didn't want to believe there weren't obvious signs when someone thought about stilled lungs and snapped necks because then he couldn't tell. The thought of his friends being like him beneath the skin was infuriating because misery loved company, and Roxas had condemned himself to the concept of being completely alone in how he felt.

"Don't drink alone tonight, kiddo."

Light eyebrows furrowed together, and Roxas paused. "I can't tell if that's an invitation or not."

"No, just don't drink alone. That's how alcoholics rip free from the greasy womb of addiction. All bloody and placenta-_esque_."

"Oh."

Axel suddenly blew a raspberry. "I was kidding. You should drop by my place after this. I'll bandage your carpet burns, we'll fall in love, and due to our class differences be forced to romance one another from afar until your Rockefeller father and I play a game of Russian Roulette. By then you'll be pregnant with our bastard daughter, and we'll have to flee because I defiled your _rose petals_ prior to marriage."

"Do you wake up every morning and gather your material before embarking on the world or is it just a tragic mental illness?"

"I'm a fan of vocalizing spontaneous thoughts," Axel said, only fleetingly glancing over as someone bolted past their hiding spot.

"As in missile vomiting your brain junk on unsuspecting villagers?"

"Women and children alike."

"So, you're the human agent orange."

"More like agent _red_."

Roxas gave the man an accusing stare. "_Axel_—"

"Okay, that was a bad joke even for me, but I'm not perfect."

"Definitely close but no cigar."

The ginger cackled. "Was that a compliment or a misfired insult?"

"I'm not sure myself, but apparently, we need to consider refining our communication skills."

Shifting in his spot, Roxas checked the timer on his gun only to realize they had two minutes of playtime left. A frown formed, and he wondered if there was a chance they could play another round. His inner perfectionist had managed to surface, and he genuinely wanted to raise his rank and pursue a better overall score. Though he wasn't sure if he could ever see himself making a hobby out of laser tag the way Axel and his friends clearly had, he liked the idea of occasionally using it as a form of both working out and an emotional outlet. Sometimes a person just needed to spend thirty minutes pretending they were blasting open chest cavities to keep it together.

When Xigbar flitted past, Axel struggled to pull himself free from his hiding place, and Roxas wondered if the prolonged leg touching had forced their skin to melt together because they could not untangle themselves. Axel was laughing, and Roxas made a face of disbelief when he leaned forward and scrunched up against the teenager's chest. Instinctively, he gripped Axel's bicep, and he reiterated to himself how much he liked Axel's sideburns and the way he playfully scrunched up his nose as if responding to a subtle inside joke. Even the way the man grasped onto his shoulder before abruptly flopping them over onto their sides made his throat contract, but he genuinely couldn't wrap his brain around why he responded the way he did to Axel's seemingly minor traits of existence. It was frustrating, and after more than thirty minutes of it, exhausting.

They fell onto the battlefield with a defining thud, and Roxas laid there like a stunned mole before Axel began to belly crawl out from the entanglement. Continuing to lay there for the sake of dramatics, Roxas didn't bother even twitching a limb until Axel hissed out his name in that domineering manner where he was certain he would end up punched in the dick if he didn't readily respond.

"Crash course on elementary signing," Axel murmured once Roxas had knelt down behind a barrel beside him. He began to smoothly work his fingers in the kind of fluid motions Roxas had never played witness to before. There was something about the way he was so expressive as he worked through bending fingers and swiftly twisted wrists that left him faintly slack jaw. "This means run and this means don't you fucking dare move."

Roxas clumsily mimicked the motions, and his frown deepened significantly when Axel seemed amused by his inability to rapidly grasp onto the foreign communication method. Setting aside his gun for what Roxas was certain had to be the millionth time; Axel grasped onto Roxas' hands and began to gently redirect fingers. After a prolonged period of Roxas' hands not cooperating, the pair was soon settled on their knees in front of one another growing frustrated because Roxas' fingers were apparently incapable of complying.

"You're _trying_ to piss me off," Axel grumbled. He was clearly determined to make Roxas' fingers move because he wasn't giving up no matter how many exasperated noises Roxas made. "If fingers could have brain cells, then yours wouldn't have any."

"They're still functioning. I don't think they're vegetables yet."

"You're right. They're more at the level of those classes they shoved mentally incapacitated kids into in my high school."

"You have _no _class."

Axel stopped and looked up to give him a reproachful stare. "Do you _really_ care?"

A corner of his mouth dipped down. "Not really."

He returned to the task at hand. "Thought so."

The overhead lights brightened and Roxas' abruptly blurred gaze shot to Axel's chest. His equipment was blinking, and when he realized his was too, Roxas knew the game was over. Wondering why it seemed like zero time had passed since reluctantly stepping out of the car, he thought back only to come to terms with the fact it felt quick because he had gone into prolonged defense mode. The memory blocking had initiated upon stepping through the doors, and he had spent the majority of the game time hiding behind walls and in as many crevices he could wiggle his vertically impaired frame into. Roxas hadn't joined laser tag on the lookout for life changing exposés, which he even he could admit had been obvious.

"Are you fucking kidding me? I swear they're making these rounds shorter." Axel habitually brushed his thumb across one of Roxas' left knuckles while glancing around the lit room still veiled by smoke. "Next time I—"

When Axel cut himself short and directed his stare to the knuckles he had been dragging the pads of his fingers across, Roxas couldn't figure out what had caught his attention, at least, not until the rubbing grew concentrated on a single spot. There was a short wince he wished he could have sucked in along with the reflexive contracting of his fingers. Axel's previously relaxed expression grew tense. Furrowed eyebrows were accompanied by pursed Cover Girl lips, and Roxas deluded himself into believing Axel was still frustrated with his lackluster round of laser tag. The petting continued, and the pair soon stared one another down, but Roxas averted his gaze first because Axel's knowingness was eerie.

He wanted to spit in the redhead's face. Only to follow it by reaching out and digging his fingers into his clavicles to feel the satisfying pop of breaking skin beneath his nails as they dipped behind bone. His knuckles were pink, puffy and paid homage to the faintly jagged ridges along the bottom of his front teeth. He had inspected them multiple times and understood the damage they could inflict when he wasn't careful. Weapons being eroded away by stomach acid, and if he hadn't been trained by the parental shock collar, then he would have screamed an apology in Axel's face. _Sorry, you piece of degenerate, low-grade, uptown trash. They'll rot out eventually, and it'll be so much fucking easier for me._ _Stop looking at me like you fucking know shit about it. Stop fucking looking. There's nothing to look at. I'm nothing to look at._

"That carpet burn is gallery worthy." Axel grinned before easily bringing himself upright. "I had no idea you were so _fragile_."

Roxas returned the smile with a slightly wrinkled nose and disgruntled expression before following Axel's lead. "I had no idea you were such an asshole."

"I always imagine how difficult my life would be if I wasn't conventionally attractive."

And in that moment, Roxas wasn't positive if he absolutely despised Axel Diamond or wanted them to be friends. He considered it progress.

* * *

Axel smoked like a freight train. Whenever they parted ways in the parking lot so they could go to their separate homes and shower Axel was lighting up, and when Roxas knocked on the man's front door an hour later with a bottle of quality rum in his hand, Axel was holding a squirming ferret in one hand and a Djarum black in the other. The smoke wasn't typical cigarette smoke, and though he knew it was because Axel smoked cloves, Roxas couldn't help but to place the scent somewhere else. It was sweet, but after prolonged exposure it made his sensitive throat ache. That aside, he enjoyed every scratchy upshot. There was something about it that made his pulse race because he knew the allspice element was permeated into every fiber of the clothes Axel tossed around his bedroom. He wondered if it had leaked into his olive toned skin. Though, after those thoughts, he decided he was a grade A creep who probably needed to consider behavioral reformation before he turned into a boxer brief stealing stalker who kept them under the seat of his car so he could sniff on the go.

"Does the host have to share the gift?" Axel had his forearm pressed against the door frame and a sharp stare locked in on the rum, but he eventually stepped back to let Roxas into his home. "Is that _Pyrat_? Do you know how many rounds of cheap pornographic acting I would have to endure in order to afford that?"

"Why is there a Baby On Board sticker on the back of your car?" Originally, Roxas hadn't intended on asking, but the sign was an obnoxious yellow clashing with the back of Axel's red KIA Soul. He would have been lying had he said he wasn't anticipating an unplanned pregnancy story, and Roxas had spent the entire walk to Axel's front door trying to imagine him as a father. Multiple scenes flashed through his mind. One of them being Axel tossing the baby into a wood chipper followed by him attempting to warm a bottle only to set the house on fire. The conclusion to the latter story was Axel left the child behind in the fiery house because it really was every man for his self.

"The car _is_ the baby."

Stepping past Axel, Roxas dragged a hand along the scratched door and walked into the living room. Booted feet strode across stained carpeting, and the permeated scent of burnt weed where someone had attempted to smoke resin too many times whirled into his nostrils like a sandstorm. There was a form of self-awareness in that moment where Roxas was thin-skinned to the way the fabric of his shirt dragged across his sun-kissed abdomen, and he knew there were bones beneath layers of muscle tissue and sewers of blood. Treading into the habitats of individuals who weren't mannequins lined up along the storefronts of living was a rarity, and he understood the different degrees of living. Some people were meant to sit on display. He couldn't deny that no matter how he attempted to approach life, but then there were those who flaunted their life through motion and strode down runways. He was the peachy adolescent posing in the back of a Sears catalog, and he was commercial.

"We were just lighting up," Demyx said from his spot on the floor.

In front of him was the coffee table, and the fellow blond was prodding at ashes with a set of tweezers for any smoke-able debris to add to the stockpile of fresh herb he had set aside. His eyebrows were furrowed, but his lips were drawn into a genuine smile Roxas found reassuring. Though he had been snarky, Roxas had a feeling Demyx genuinely had no beef with him. There was never an ounce of animosity that seemed glaringly obvious, and Roxas was confident in his ability to read social cues even if his reactions had knack for implying otherwise.

He sat down on the floor beside Demyx, and Axel plopped down on the couch beside Xigbar who flashed Axel the kind of knowing stare Roxas couldn't overlook. It was expectant, unsettling, and his eye had narrowed in an almost devilish manner. There was the reality Roxas dealt with his bouts of paranoia, but he knew better. He knew that had been weird, but by the time he had considered accepting something was strange, he had mentally talked himself in circles and convinced himself otherwise. Xigbar and Axel were engaging in a casual conversation about their joint theology course, and Demyx was politely asking Roxas those mundane introductory questions where a conversation was bound to fizzle out and die like a raccoon on the forest floor. It'd twitch, try, heave a final breath, and the corpse would either be a meal for the vermin or fungi fertilizer.

Roxas' thumb was calloused from where he had spent the past two months repeatedly dragging it along lighters, and when Demyx passed the bong, he wondered if they would smoke enough to wear the hardened skin away. The want to be baked was enough to bring him to ignoring his unending text messages from Hayner and Pence, and with the tilt of a lighter and his thumb on the carb, he fleetingly glanced at Axel who was watching him carefully. The stare was intense, but instead of disregarding it, he gave the other man eye contact and allowed the bong to gurgle as he drew in the first hit. One of his eyebrows crept upward, and instead of politely blowing smoke away, he held and exhaled the steady stream in the direction of Axel.

"Got something to say?" Roxas asked with steady voice considering the sharp burn along his throat.

Axel's demeanor wasn't about to falter, but the need to smirk was evident. "Puff, puff, pass."

At that, Roxas gave the lighter a couple scratchy clicks before bringing the mouthpiece to his lips. "Don't fucking rush me."

The four passed the bong around thrice before Roxas began to finally feel lifted. When he was laughing at Demyx's poorly constructed puns, he decided then was the time to open the rum, which suddenly turned into a struggle. There was perforated plastic, and after fighting with it due to shaky fingers from low blood sugar he passed off as the general idiocy, Axel scooted from the couch laughing and sat down beside Roxas to take over what had apparently morphed into a surgical procedure.

"I'm not trying to divide the Red sea," Axel cackled as he too struggled with the Pyrat bottle. "Let my people go!"

"Give it back!" Roxas tried to retrieve the rum. "You're worthless."

"Right in the self-esteem!" Axel feigned a pained expression as he finally tore off the cap's restraint. "Now I'm going to cry while masturbating to your pictures."

Xigbar groaned from disgust with the bong in hand. "I've got a gun in my bedroom with a bullet I'd be more than happy to watch you feed yourself."

There was a quick laugh on Roxas' part before he swallowed down the first swig of amber. It was smooth enough to keep him from coughing or shivering, but he had never been desperate enough to buy the kind of booze capable of making his stomach roil from the thought alone. Axel was the expert at pounding down shot after shot of what smelt like straight fingernail polish and was probably less healthy than drinking gasoline. Mango Burnett's had a knack for barely scraping the ten dollar mark, and when Roxas had finished handing the rum off to Demyx, Axel had stood up, disappeared into the kitchen, and reappeared with aforementioned flavored vodka. He drank it straight without much reaction but a slight frown, and instead of returning to his couch, he sat back down beside Roxas and handed off the bottle.

"Man it up a little," he murmured before extending his lanky arm for the purple bong and its swirling greens and whites. "Make me proud."

"Says the man who handed me a bottle of _flavored_ vodka." Roxas brought the lips of the bottle to his nose, took a quick whiff, and when the scent singed his nose hairs he nearly coughed. "_No_."

"One swig, Eames."

"Fuck yourself, _Diamond_. That's battery acid in a bottle."

"It gets the job done." The redhead pointed at Xigbar who was in the midst of a gulp of Pyrat. "That rum isn't going to be enough to get us fucked up."

"What if I don't want to get fucked up?"

Axel's expression grew knowing again, and Roxas' lips formed a thin line. "Then why are you here?"

"Demyx's comedic genius."

At that, Demyx slung an arm around Roxas' shoulders and brought him close. He leaned in and began whispering in Roxas' ear. "I always knew we were destined to be best friends. That shit is neurological _science_."

Roxas had initially assumed they would be doing more than smoking and drinking as a quadrangle, but he wasn't particularly disappointed when Xigbar announced he didn't feel like going to a frat house to essentially do the same thing with only the perk of potentially being puked on. Axel agreed he too was moderately indifferent about going to that specific party, and after almost demolishing forty dollars worth of kush, Roxas was tipsy, baked, and contently on his back with the stained ceiling above him. He stared with the abrupt want to tell Axel how his sideburns looked good, and he didn't want him to shave them. Somewhere between pushing away the vodka and reaching for the bong, Xigbar had explained the bet Axel had managed to lose in the name of having to grow facial hair, but he couldn't recall exactly what had gone down. There had been a fire hydrant and Demyx had nearly lost his left foot. He was hoping it would all add up in the morning.

Sleepily finding everything around him significantly funnier than it genuinely was, Roxas wanted to stand up and sway his arms about the way he had in the field with Olette. His mood wasn't doused in an undecipherable dread, and when he shifted his shoulder blades against the cheap field of carpet, he could have sworn it was grass. Roxas was comfortable enough in his skin in that moment to disregard the hunger pangs that had a knack for simultaneously being cancelled out by the insatiable want to dig his fingers into the back of his tongue.

"Food break," Xigbar muttered before rising to his feet. He stood still for a moment to get his bearings and assess exactly how sloshed he was before stiffening his spine. "As if we have any food in this God forsaken place."

"I think there's a bag of chicken nuggets in there," Demyx said while shakily getting to his feet. He attempted to sprint toward the kitchen only to fumble in an attempt to miss a scampering albino ferret. "We should make _all_ of them. We'll make a tower of them, and when we're done conquering that fucking empire we'll take the entire packet of mini Oreo cookies I've hidden from you greedy jerk wads and eat them in a bowl like cereal. I want a chicken pot pie. Axel, I'm going to eat your chicken pot pie."

Axel paused in the middle of inhaling only to begin hacking up a lung. Roxas turned his head to watch the man plop the bong down and shake from the coughing fit, but he abruptly began heaving laughter in Axel's dispense. He wasn't sure if it was because Axel had been pointing at Demyx the entire time or if it was because he had started snatching up lighters and anything with mediocre value and chucking them. In the end, Roxas couldn't make himself believe the reasoning mattered. He was genuinely laughing because of other people, and he wasn't biting the inside of his cheek raw from the frustration brought on by his friends' never ceasing need to perform as if the perfectly timed sentence could be the difference between the survival of every newborn in the world. There was natural coursing amusement in the moment, and he was soon sitting upright and smacking the in between of Axel's shoulders with a little more force than necessary.

"Don't eat my fucking pot pie! I worked for that!"

"You drank the last of my milk, and yes, pushing is so respectable!" Demyx dramatically pranced into the kitchen after Xigbar and made a huge showing of opening and closing the freezer over and over again, slamming the frozen pot pie on the counter top, tossing and fumbling around with the box, and eventually, he ripped it open.

"If I hear that microwave—" Axel was caught off by the repetitive banging of the microwave door being yanked open and thrown shut, and it wasn't until the beeping of Demyx putting in the time broke the silence did Axel scramble to his feet as if someone had just threatened to abduct a fetus from his wife's uterus.

There was a moment where Roxas anticipated Axel falling, but he strode into the kitchen as if completely unaffected. "Demyx, if you value your life, then stop that fucking microwave!"

A silent struggle ensued, and Xigbar's wicked laughter filtered through Demyx's abruptly pitched scream that made Roxas wonder if there had been a homicide in the kitchen over freezer food. He expected the satisfying splat of organs colliding with checkered tiled flooring, but all that followed was the distinct opening and closing of the microwave and an encore of the freezer doing the same. When Axel returned he was carrying a bag of what appeared to be tortilla chips and a couple bottles of water. He dropped one of the icy bottles onto Roxas' lower abdomen before plopping back down beside him. Demyx was nowhere to be found, and Xigbar abruptly bitched about how arduous it was to make boxed macaroni and cheese.

"Want one?" Axel asked as he opened the bag with that distinct pop.

Roxas shook his head before rolling onto his side. "Might puke."

"Light weight?" He set the bag aside before grabbing the bong. "Take another hit. You'll probably feel better."

"I don't want to move."

Axel didn't hesitate before speaking. "Then I propose a non-implicative shotgun."

"The fact you had to specify it wasn't implicative means you're uncomfortable with your sexuality."

"That hypocrisy has the stench of a sun baked corpse."

For some reason, Roxas managed another laugh before grasping onto Axel's elbow. "Shotgun before I have to puke into your chip bag."

"For someone who was raised on diamond encrusted bottles and the sweaty brows of all of my friends' laboring parents you're delightfully revolting at times."

There was a scoff on the blond's part, but he didn't know how to come back to that. "I can't always be perfect."

"That perfect definition is becoming glaringly subjective."

The sudden bubbling of Axel drawing back smoke had Roxas redirect his gaze, and for some reason, he zeroed in on the other's hands. Elongated fingers that were surprisingly proportionate with the rest of his oddly shaped body, and he wondered what strange radioactivity Axel's mother had been exposed to during her pregnancy for her son to develop into such a smooth talking pretty boy. The reality was Axel had absolutely no room to talk when he made subtly snide comments about Roxas' groomed features because that skin had to be moisturized, and he waxed. Roxas was _positive_ he waxed.

When Axel set the bong aside and went to lean over him, there was a bizarre fluidity in the motion of Roxas reaching up with incautious hands. Fingers gripped toned biceps, lips parted, and when Axel began exhaling that steady stream of smoke into his mouth, he breathed in with the distinct knowledge that the intake had momentarily whirled around in the interior of the man's spongy lungs. The fabric of Axel's sleeves was soon clenched between his fingers, and even though Axel was carefully hovering over him with an open palm planted beside his head, there was heaviness between them. Someone had filled the space with cement, and as he held the hit, neither of them broke eye contact, and he was glad.

Roxas—the boy who was so caustic when it came to the possibility of forgoing his routine for even just new friends—was suddenly consumed by the concept of being fucked until he couldn't feel the nerves in his thighs and was choked blue. The gears behind his sternum were rusted and jammed beyond the possibility of repair, and he didn't want to risk someone busting him open like a forgotten clock in the attic only to realize he wasn't worth consignment shop inventory. Roxas understood he wasn't good enough for secondhand use, and it made being beaten down significantly less destructive for him. On his good days, he found it gratuitous.

He tilted his head back, and in a single smooth torrent, respired. Roxas was still clinging to Axel when his lungs were free of smoke, and he bit back any breathiness of acceptance when Axel's fingers slid into his blond locks and held still. There was the dare on the tip of his tongue where he wanted to prod at Axel's resistance until the ginger snapped back and he stung himself. More so than not he was positive he genuinely didn't want anyone for the right reasons. The ability to feign interest and let people crumble at his expense was a trait he had both inherited and cultivated since birth. Walking away in the name of self-betterment was what his father had raised him to believe was necessary sacrifice. No one got ahead without stepping on a couple piles of maggoty bodies, but Roxas wasn't sure if what he did bettered anything. He was the embodiment of selfishness and lathered in the egocentrism because the fleeting moments when he believed he cared were tranquil. Roxas knew himself as a small, emotionally disturbed child, and he liked to believe it was obvious enough to the point of it solely being his victim's fault if they got burned by him. They should have known better.

"I'm too fucked up for this," Axel admitted, but he didn't move even when Roxas returned to looking directly up at his marble carved face. There was a falter there and Roxas was more than ready to take advantage of it. "And you're—"

"Too good for you?" Roxas murmured the words with a taunting edge.

He drew back an inch. "Beneath me."

"You never waste an opportunity to be bold, do you?"

"Honest, Roxas. It's call being honest."

"So, you're _honestly_ too good for me?"

Axel's eyes were sharp as flint when Roxas cupped a side of his face, and there was a peculiar spring to his pulse when the man flinched like an angered fight dog. He wanted Axel to punch him until his nose spurted blood and fragments of his skull splintered into his brain. Death in anyway was generally appealing, but assistance had its own rotten charm. He wanted them to fuck before shoving the barrel between shiny rows of braces altered teeth only to pull the trigger before the post-coital glow had worn off. They didn't have to know one another like the back of their hands to step onto a balanced scale together, and it was everything he wanted.

"Does it make you feel better when others berate you?" Axel was gritting teeth, but he remained composed in comparison to what Roxas had anticipated and wanted. He was begging for showy bitterness, but he clearly hadn't struck a sensitive enough nerve. He would have to wait until they knew each other better. "Is there a psychological slip there because your entire life is nothing but a rich boy cliché where Daddy didn't love you enough, so now you're hellbent on being fucked and sucked dry by someone you don't know in hopes of it truly being what defines a loving relationship? Do you want confirmation, Roxas? Would letting you gag on my dick give your hopes and dreams for only corrosion a leg to stand on?"

"Don't talk like you think you know me."

"You're a chocolate soldier. You're truism and predictable because there are so many like you. I don't need to _know you_ to know what you are." Axel's fingers wrapped around Roxas' neck, and he bit back a laugh when Roxas remained straight faced. "I bet you'd writhe if I applied pressure."

Axel paused and released Roxas without anything else to say, and for some reason, Roxas was wearing his own smirk when the redhead spoke again. "But I won't give you the satisfaction."

"As if you'd be able to give me that." Roxas wasn't sure if he had just challenged Axel or not.

"Roxas, you're the Rolling Stones and you can't get no satisfaction."

Demyx meandered into the living room and made the kind of noise of disgust commonly heard when a child witnessed their parents sucking face. He was horrified, displeased with this peculiar positioning on his respectable carpeting, and when Roxas turned his head to get a look at his face, he knew Demyx was everything but happy about what he was seeing.

Sitting down on the couch and relatively far away, Demyx popped a bite of macaroni into his mouth and chewed with a deep frown. "Seeing that made my macaroni taste funny."


	6. Hook

_**Chapter Six: Hook **_

When he woke up with his nose attached to Axel's ribcage, he immediately rolled away from the sleeping man and reached beneath the coffee table for his discarded slip-on shoes. It didn't matter to him where they had fallen asleep or what they had done before sobering up. It could have been platonic, purely sexual, maybe even romantic, but in the end, Roxas foresaw an inevitable let down where he would no longer find himself as enraptured as he had been the night before. Unless inebriated, he was incapable of carrying a tune for another human being; at that soul curdling thought, he began digging around in his pockets for car keys. He hadn't even hit it and he was trying to quit Axel as if he was an alcoholic one beer from liver failure. They didn't know one another anyway, and he would be damned before it got to the point where his disappearance mattered. Even Roxas understood he was in one of life's many limbos. The in between of high school and college was not the picturesque time to meet people who weren't connected to point A or B.

"What's the hurry?" Demyx asked as he entered the living room with a mug of coffee in hand. "Does someone need to pick up their morning after pill?"

"You're funnier when I'm drunk," he said, yanking on his shoes as if there was a blow torch bubbling the skin of his ankles. Demyx snorted into his mug, but the pair stifled any other noises when Axel shifted onto his side and unconsciously pushed a set of fingers into his flaming hair. It wasn't until a full thirty seconds of silence held did they make eye contact again.

"Are you _running_?"

_Fuck you too_, Roxas thought as he scrambled to his feet. The moment his thin fingers wrapped around the deadened metal he waved at Demyx and stepped over the sleeping form of Axel. It wasn't until then did he realize Putrid had nestled daringly close to his head. Casting a momentary glance over his shoulder, Roxas sucked in a quick breath before grasping onto the handle and turning the padlock free. There was a swift moment of blatant fear, and he was panicking in a way he couldn't explain. Everything within his thorax was pulsating from dread, but he did his best to keep his breathing continuously steady. He didn't have it in him to freely express the rush of anxiety he got from waking up next to another living person. Axel had been sucking in those shallow breaths, and Roxas could have grabbed one of Demyx's ironic decorative pillows and held it over his face until he stopped for good.

When the rubber of his shoes smacked against the cement porch, he picked up speed and began striding to his car with a single hand pushing through his unruly blond hair. People called it ruggedly kept, but he hated everything about the way his hair laid. He hated his face, he hated the way his heart sped up when he realized there was something gravelly wrong with him still being six feet above his rightful place, and he hated his nurtured ability to keep running until the earth split for him and he could take his seat in the hell he hoped was real. There was nothing special about him: he used money to mask the fact he wasn't particularly good at anything. Roxas was just _there_, and he was privileged by parents who bathed in herpes infected money. He hated his parents. He hated his friends. He hated where he was going to college. He hated biology. He hated law, and above all, he hated himself. There was nothing but unceasing waves of unambiguous self-loathing, and all he was doing to better the situation was depriving himself of nutrients and attempting to simultaneously exonerate his wrong doings by upchucking the nothingness within the pits of his gelling guts.

It wasn't until he was inside his summer baked Mercedes did he scream. There was a previous rawness to his throat he could only further by burying his face into his hands and releasing a mournful wail. This entire dramatic escapade was him realizing he was destined to be nothing but a monster's offspring. Sweat was already making the back of his neck sheen when he began slamming a hand against the steering wheel and sobbing like the child he was. The tears were salty and the streams of thick snot leaked over his lips and onto his tongue, but he wasn't revolted because there was no way for him to find any more disgust in himself. There was no level lower than where the bottom of his shoes had elegantly landed, and he was trembling on top of cracked foundation. Roxas knew he was going to die, and at eighteen, he could only pretend he was ready.

* * *

"Is it too early to drink?" Hayner asked before sipping on a bottle of low-carb Muscle Milk while Roxas shoveled in spoonful after spoonful of Lucky Charms.

They were settled on Roxas' bed with wireless Xbox controllers perched on their thighs, and they had finally grown bored enough with Xbox Live to sit in their own enforced silence. Discussions only happened when Olette dragged them out kicking and screaming, and neither of them was receiving replies to the clipped text messages they had shot her an hour before. A silence Roxas wouldn't dare refer to as comfortable was hanging between them like dangling cobras; he wondered if this was going to be a constant in his life once they moved in together. For best friends, Hayner and Roxas weren't well matched in their conversational chemistry, and it had only grown worse since Roxas blatantly ditched Hayner to hang out with the Uptown kids. He could only compare it to dealing with a scorned girlfriend.

"Not if you know your Douglas Adams," Roxas murmured in between chewing. It had been slow chewing. The kind where he rolled pebbles of lead around his mouth with a desert tongue and wondered if he would ever find something that could ride up his esophagus as easily as partially digested Lucky Charms. "Time is an _illusion_."

"Does that mean we can start drinking?"

"If you want, man."

Roxas didn't say anything when Hayner opened a bottle of vodka they had jacked from his mother's liquor cabinet, but as he sat there and waited for his turn to take a shot, he wondered if children were doomed to be just like their parents. Everyone he had met who had tried to do otherwise had repeatedly been shot in the foot, and there was nothing steady about their lives. Roxas wanted steady, but he didn't. He wanted to know there would be a constant in his life that wouldn't rule his every breath with an iron fist.

They sat around and drank before lunchtime, and when they were done with a good portion of their handle of vodka, Roxas found himself dragging his fingers through Hayner's hair and begging him to plow him through the mattress with his fingernails digging into his shoulders. It was routine. This happened, and Roxas always knew his oh-so straight best friend wanted him more than any girl wandering around downtown, so it was easy. There was something so effortless about pushing Hayner back and working at that hideous Gucci belt Roxas would have used to choke him dead if he knew he had room beneath his bed to hide the corpse. Half the time the sex didn't even feel remotely good, but he sloppily rode him until Hayner came inside like he owned every single bit of the blond, and Roxas enjoyed knowing someone wanted him enough to stake some kind of claim. It was satisfying in the aspect, and Roxas wasn't in tune enough to not think of it as anything but an ego boost because they both knew he would never be Hayner's, and he couldn't even bring himself to find it pathetic.

No matter how platonic they seemed there was a possessive edge on Hayner's part where he had been adamant about them living together. He had insisted they fix their college schedules around one another's, and when Roxas found himself face first in a pillow groaning out the other's name in hopes of coming and getting somewhere for once, he thought about all the ways he could tear life from the other boy's thorax. _Dead_. He wanted Hayner dead every time he was on his knees or leaned over in the other's BMW sucking cock like the whore Hayner absolutely adored referring to him as. Cock slut was a favorite, and when Roxas swallowed as if it was second nature, he knew he was one. He hated the way it felt when he bitched at Hayner to drive him somewhere to get a drink because his spunk tasted like rot, but he knew he'd do it again, and well, so did Hayner.

He didn't come, and he didn't care.

When it was all said and done and Hayner had watched Roxas get himself off, they sat up and drank a little more only to finally cave and pull out that little brown box sitting in Roxas' nightstand drawer. One line later and they were yanking on clothes and heading out the front door to Hayner's car because they needed to meet up with people. They weren't sure how the sun was setting already, but there it was drenching the horizon in blood and a spilt screwdriver. Orange and so much red intermingling, and it made Roxas believe he enjoyed the concept of being alive because he could feel the universe in his veins.

"Xigbar has some more good shit," Hayner said as he pulled out of the driveway, and Roxas was leaned back in the passenger seat trying to remember exactly how a lighter functioned. Eventually habitual second nature kicked in and he was lighting one of the Djarum blacks he had stolen from Axel without remembering. It had been sitting in his pack for several days, and he wasn't sure why he had waited until then to smoke it. The cigar wasn't even that spectacular, but he liked the smell, and he liked the idea of Axel being pretentious enough to drop what little money he had on something that was only a twelve count per pack.

"I'm in a pretty good place." Roxas didn't want to head to Uptown. He smelled like sex and vodka, but he was sure it was expected, so after some consideration, he nodded. "Yeah, we should go."

"That's my boy!"

Hayner sped, and Roxas watched the lights flood in and out of the car with his fingers tightly wrapped around the handle only to eventually roll the window down. The warm air flooded in, and he was certain he was enjoying life right then. This was what happened. He got fucked up, and he knew he only felt good when he wasn't completely there, but that wasn't surprising, really.

"Act sober—" Roxas couldn't finish his sentence when Hayner and he stepped out of the car. There was a sudden joint cackling, and they knew they were getting looks. Like every weekend, Xigbar's house was crowded with people Roxas could have lit on fire and laughed to tears about without a second thought for remorse. He hated everyone in such a powerful way that there were times he wondered if it could make him invincible. He wasn't sure if he found that thought reassuring or if there was something terrifying to it.

"You look good." Hayner said before they went to open the door, and he reached out to artfully mess up Roxas' hair. "We look good."

"Like that's fucking news to me."

Pushing open the front door, Roxas and Hayner strode through the house and began asking around for Demyx, Axel or Xigbar. There was a haze to their moments, and he was drunk and high, but he was happy in that relaxed yet burnt up sort of way where he knew there was something wrong if cocaine made him chill out. That wasn't how it worked, but it didn't matter because he wanted to find Axel. Roxas wasn't even sure why he wanted to, but he genuinely liked the idea of them talking, and for once he believed maybe he could be loose enough to say something to the redhead that would make the man like him. Roxas was certain Axel hated him. He could feel it in his bones when they were together, but that was also everyone. He generalized the universe's outlook on him because it was just that much simpler.

When he found Axel, the redhead was sitting on the stairs with a joint in hand while talking to a handful of girls sporting University gear and thickly highlighted hair. Putrid was perched on his lap with her nose in the air, and Roxas was suddenly keen on how intricate Axel's characteristics were. Roxas was constantly surveying his face, but he couldn't help himself. He wanted to ask where his gene pool derived from, and he wanted to ask if he could get on his knees and swallow it down. Tasting life in its purest form, and Roxas wasn't sure why people constantly referred to sex as dirty. If it was dirty, then everyone derived from the squalor. Then again, when he looked at it that way, things started to make more sense.

They made eye contact, and Axel didn't conceal a look of surprise. There was amusement there, but Roxas was too far gone to consider bitching about the potentially mocking undertones.

"Someone appears happy to see me," said the redhead before he took a quick hit. Roxas knew he was scraping every seeable inch of his frame with a calculative stare, and there was something powerful about that. He could tell Axel wanted to fuck him sideways. "Tell me, dandy boy, what dragon have I gutted in which gem studded cavern to earn the honor of this consultation?"

"I'm just the messenger handing you the execution papers," he murmured before reaching out for the joint.

Axel didn't seem to find it weird Roxas had the audacity to assume he would hand his kush over. "You're a cruel soul, young lad. Doing the big man's dirty work? Where's your pride?"

"I lost it somewhere between the last line I did and the hit I'm about to take."

"Well, if that's true, then I'm riding the Big Kahuna of disregard." He laughed when Roxas brought the joint to his lips, gave it back, and planted his hands on Axel's upper-thighs. "My, my, my-have you been participating in the act of _drinking_? You smell like you spritzed vodka on your vitals before deciding to grace me with your daunting five foot presence. Did you finally pick up the handbook and read the final chapters? Booze: The Way to a College Man's Mummified Liver and Premature Death?"

He exhaled smoke. "I think we're reading different handbooks."

"And why's that?"

"Because I'm pretty sure I just finished Booze: The Way to an Accumulation of Burning Urination and False Hope."

"So tell me, Roxas. Do you think we'll ever be on the same page, then?"

"Not unless someone swaps volumes."

"No one can permanently swap volumes either. Temporary visits to the relationship library in order to accommodate the flavor of the week gets tedious after a while. Those worn out paperbacks where we've highlighted pretty paragraphs and taken notes for reference are handsomer in my opinion. I prefer the organic feel of knowing someone can keep a spine together even after being worn through by the endless rereads."

Axel didn't give Roxas the opportunity to pop back with anything because one of the girls had spoken, and Roxas wasn't as important as a blonde wearing a pair of factory distressed jeans she had cut directly beneath the ass cheeks. Blond as he himself was, Roxas wasn't sure why she was talking because he was certain the only thing her Valley girl mouth would be good for was a leisurely cock suck. Too much eyeliner, too much bronzer, and she was _cheap_. He could smell the Hollister perfume every time she gestured, and he'd be damned before he was seen as a douche for having the audacity to critique her lifestyle. He wasn't associating the slut stigma with her bleached hair and low cut everything because Roxas wasn't someone who had the thought process to perceive sex as anything condemnable, but what _was_ condemnable was poor taste, and she was one t-shirt away from welfare.

"Come on, you cretin." Axel stood up. "We can talk about life and get emotional over your proclivity for drinking up groundless misery. It'll be _divine_. Maybe we'll make a revolutionary breakthrough that dense skull of yours, and I'll finally earn the Nobel Peace Prize I've been denied too many years in a row."

"How would that make you qualify for a Nobel Peace Prize?"

"Adolescent angst is poignant in that humiliating way that follows us through the entirety of our lives. Those embarrassing feelings you're overanalyzing and shamefully justifying leave an everlasting impact, and in our own ways, we all take that journey through teenage indignity where we think our issues are really just that significant. For a lack of a better word, it's dumb. It's dumb that we let it affect us until we take that train into Cardiac Arrest town, but for some reason, no one seems to know how to stop it. Do you know how much happier people would be if we could forget those _seminal_ years? How much people would pay to forget those itsy memories we can't seem to let go of? Who would have thought when we fell down the bleachers in ninth grade that someday recollecting the moment would almost be crippling?"

"Seminal as in formative," Roxas said as he followed Axel up the rest of the stairs. "As in, you need them to formulate a personality and sense of self."

"That's such bullshit." They made their way through collections of people, and Roxas had to take a second to wonder how he was even carrying a conversation. His brain was contracting with oversensitive electrical currents, and Axel's know-it-all persona was exhausting in his current state. In fact, he probably wouldn't have felt guilty about cutting out his tongue at this point. "If sneezing a ball of snot onto your first crush's face impacts your sense of morale, then I have no faith in humanity."

"Okay, then switch your major to neurosciences and win a Peace Prize."

Axel had clearly sensed his disinterest, and he tossed him an amused smirk over his shoulder before pushing open the bedroom door. "So, what are you on?"

"None of your business," he grumbled, brushing past the man and making his way to the bed.

Curled up on the end of the mattress was Putrid, and when Roxas sat down, she scampered up to her paws and bounded toward Axel more like a dog than any ferret he had seen. Then again, he hadn't been around very many ferrets, so when the redhead scooped her up and began to give her Eskimo kisses, he wasn't sure what was and wasn't normal. Deciding he had seen stranger things—which really was an understatement—he watched the pet and owner exchange fleeting affections before rolling over onto his stomach and burying his face into a pillow. There was the scent of Armani cologne, and it took everything in his power not to deep sniff like the creep he could only pretend he wasn't.

"I was going to offer something up, but I'm not into inducing speed balling, so—" Axel placed Putrid back onto the mattress before making his way to a drawer. There was minor shuffling around before the familiar crumbling of a cheap sandwich bag beneath fingerprints. "You're gonna miss out."

Roxas didn't care, and he waited until the familiar sound of someone snorting dissipated before rolling back over to face Axel who had taken a seat on the floor. He seemed collected, normal, and that was when he decided Axel was the enigma. He was nothing but pure normalcy in comparison to what the olive toned man sported, and he wondered how he had spent the last few meetings between them believing he was the weirdo. Axel Diamond was an articulate alien programmed to exceed every person's expectations. He was composed, witty, and assertive without offending. The charm leaked from his pores like oil on a twelve year old's face, and it wasn't normal. It wasn't right, and the fact that he had the audacity to genuinely want to kill himself made Roxas ill. Jadedness had been the explanation. Bored by perfection was how Roxas saw it, and in a single sweeping thought, he wanted to tear Axel limb from limb.

That being said, he didn't have the energy, so he rolled off the bed like a purposeful klutz and flopped down beside Diamond with dead weight. He hit the ground with a thud, Axel laughed, and they sat there in grueling silence for several seconds before Roxas ended up on his back. There was the dusty ceiling—bizarre to him considering _gravity_—and he abruptly turned his head to look beneath Axel's bed. There was nothing but dirt and grime, but he kept staring until he was certain the open air had dissipated all moisture from his eyes. Blurred, and then he blinked only to refocus and see _it_ staring back at him. Drenched chestnut hair, ocean floor eyes, fissured lips, and he could practically taste the decomposition because the skin was a damp towel with supernova combustions of greens and blues like the water he waded in beside Naminé. Shadowed and lifeless but there it was with fogging eyes, and he wondered if all corpses were as stunning. _Not real. It's not real. Blink._

A boy beneath the bed with a darkness blanketed body, and he took a second to wonder if Axel was a serial killer. Maybe he was next because who he was gazing at was approximately his age. _Blink._ It'd explain why Diamond was so menacingly perfect. _Just blink and it'll be over._ There was a sudden string of connectivity where he wondered if it would be appropriate to reach out for whatever was beneath the box spring, and then there was urgency. Roxas was sifting through raw panic, and he wanted to mutilate the corpse of a brunette he had never seen before in his entire life. He was threatened by nothingness. Roxas didn't believe in ghosts, but when that silent scream stuck in his throat like a lodged chunk of food, he attempted to suck in a sharp breath of fear only to reflexively reach out. A single shot of an extended arm, and he was expecting frigid putrefaction only to blink. _Gone._

Claw flexed fingers clenched down into a fist, and he was suddenly panting. Someone was talking to him, and he figured it was Axel, but he blocked it out because what he had seen was more important. The taste of familiarity leaked out onto his tongue like a pill wrongly swallowed. It was acrid and unpleasant enough to make him wince only for it to be topped with a generous helping of melancholy. It sharply faded in the way the final streams in a tub were sucked into a drain, and he looked upward with Axel's concerned face a centimeter above his own. He was all furrowed brows and weighted breathing, and what he had seen left him skittish. It was why he shoved Axel's hand away when it pressed against his forehead. The touch had set his organs on fire.

"Are you tripping balls?"

"No," but then he took a couple seconds to rethink that. "Okay, fuck. I don't know."

"Want to go to sleep?" Axel didn't say anything when Roxas brought his palm back onto his forehead. "Wow, yeah, you should sleep."

"Wait—" He was already hoping they would forget in the morning. "Do you ever see things?"

Axel chewed on that like a cow with cud. "What kind of things?"

"Impossible things."

"Psychosis and schizophrenic things?"

Roxas hesitated. "I'm not sure."

"Want an honest answer?" The redhead asked with half-lidded eyes and a thin line that threatened to morph into a frown. "A completely unsympathetic answer?"

He nodded. "Please."

"I don't."

There was a quietness that settled, and for some reason, whatever was hidden behind Roxas' sternum shriveled. He had hoped for some form of comradery, but he had misconstrued his blind faith in Axel Diamond. He had wanted to possess the kind of faith where he knew Axel was nothing but a timeless piece of art veiling flesh gnawing grubs. He would have been able to yank down the framed work and begin picking through the tangible fetidness of the million lives he had struck down before finding his place within the meat locker. He was the glitter glued across his mirror where he would never have to reflect on himself as a human being because he himself didn't have to register as one as long as he didn't catch the flickers in the mirror. Seeing was believing, and Axel was out to do everything but catch a reaffirming echo.

* * *

"Shake your feelings jar, brush your teeth and put on some shoes."

That was the single sentence he heard after being repeatedly tapped on the end of his nose. Roxas' eyes split open like rotten honeydew, and he squinted against the morning sunlight as if gravely offended. Against his head was something warm and faintly moving, but Roxas didn't even begin to register what it could be until he sat up and it slid down the pillow toward his hip. Putrid had been snoozing in his blond locks, and he would have been thoroughly disgusted had he not spent the past five years sleeping with his mother's unending pack of dogs. Instead of saying anything about how she had technically slept on designer locks since Roxas used Giorgio Armani shampoo and Axel clearly used the same cologne, he reached out and dragged his fingers along her wobbly little spine. She took a minute to appreciate the affection before scampering away and making a dive for the pile of blankets Axel had abandoned.

"I should get going. Is Hayner awake?"

"He pulled a wake and bake and left."

Roxas groaned before trying to pick the crust around his eyes. "Great. Just great."

"I can give you a ride home, but we'll need to make a pit stop."

Axel was standing in front of his closet with his own bleary eyed look, and he was shirtless. Roxas decided he liked the man shirtless, and he spent a good few minutes gawking with his judgment skewed by tiredness. He was staring again, and he knew it wasn't polite, but he hadn't even had a cup of coffee yet. It wasn't his fault _someone_ worked out.

"What kind of pit stop?"

"I need to see my little sister."

Once they were both dressed and somewhat presentable, the pair left the house together and Demyx cut them both a suspicious stare accompanied by a small smile. Roxas didn't even want to know what he was assuming, but he had a feeling he knew pretty well. Axel laughing and shaking his head as they made their way down the front steps implied he knew what the implicative look had been insinuating, too. He fleetingly licked the space between his own lips in an attempt to dilute a smile, but as soon as he grasped onto the handle of the Kia Soul he began outright laughing. The sound echoed in his head; he was hung-over, hungry, and exhausted, but the entire concept of him shacking up with Axel was hilarious, especially when the dynamic of their very new and peculiar relationship had no wiggle room for the one night stand someone would expect both of them to jump on. There was careful compromise between the two where the agreement to remain balanced hung between them like a loaded clothesline.

"Now, maybe _you're_ okay with people messing up your low grade vehicle," Axel began while he headed to his side of the car, "with its cheap seats, dated model and generally stumpy statement in the dimension of anything with a motor. Not sure if I'd call whatever is in your piece of trash a motor, but it's relevant enough."

Roxas glanced over at him as he opened the door and gagged on a laugh. "_What_?"

"My _KIA_ _Soul_," Axel dragged the title out in a convincing French accent. "She doesn't take the abuse someone as careless and poverty stricken as you might implement. Just look at this fine cloth made of higher caliber materials than your peasant _leather_. Windows made of pure diamond and—don't you fucking touch that handle."

There was a quick cough and Roxas was struggling to breathe when Axel yanked the rearview mirror to the side so he could see Roxas through it. "This state of the art multi-angle viewer is more dependable than the outcome after eating three women's laxatives. _I'm watching you, _Roxas Eames."

"Whatever," Roxas murmured as he put on his seatbelt.

The man exhaled as he turned the ignition over. "I forgot the baby wipes. The oil on your laborer hands is going to corrode my platinum glossed interior."

They stopped for coffee on the way to wherever Axel was taking them, and Roxas hadn't bothered to ask about his sister. He'd heard the man mention her once before, but other than that, he didn't know much other than she was younger than him by a few years. That was why he nearly choked on searing Starbucks when they passed through what he had always referred to as a hospital village. Little stone houses lined up for multiple practices, and at the end of this wrongfully cheery stretch was a collective of mass buildings looming over several neighborhoods. It was essentially a healthcare and hospital district where all of the buildings were connected by a series of raised and covered bridges. If a vascular surgeon was needed in the maternity wing, then he could rush across one of the carpeted walkways that hovered above the highway and be there in five minutes. Really, it was an ingenious setup.

"You can hang out in here if you want, man," Axel said as he grabbed his wallet. "Won't subject you to the hospital atmosphere."

He could have said no. "I'll go."

There was the sudden need to accommodate Axel as a friend, which was strange considering Roxas' typical dicksmack outlook on dealing with acquaintances. He didn't believe people owed him anything, and he liked to think as long as he treated them the same way, then there would never be much of a problem. Roxas told himself stranger things had happened, as he followed the man through automatic doors. He also told himself this would be a onetime deal. Hospitals were energy succubus, and he was certain the scent of the dying permeated his skin the way one couldn't get a dairy farm's stank out of clothes without bleach. There was something worse about hospitals than nursing homes, and he was certain it was the age range. People in nursing homes went there to die because the appropriate end was near. There was constant forewarned death; hospitals weren't supposed to hold the same promise.

It was surreal to watch Axel interact with nurses as if he was greeting old family friends, and Roxas' heart took a fall because he knew this wasn't a fresh situation. Every person they passed in the off white hallways wearing their scrubs greeted the redhead like an old friend. Again, Axel was sunshine in a place where barely any light threatened to leak through. He was the breath of fresh air whirling beneath the rolling gurneys, and the rustling leaves between the subtle beeping of the cardiac monitors. Words tumbled from his tongue like liquid gold, and he had never before witnessed the kind of human eloquence that was Axel asking a nurse with a tired expression about her three month old baby and pack of toddlers. Feeling like an insignificant dust mote in the soft filter of light through windows panes, Roxas wondered what it must be like to be perfect.

Axel had never specified his sister's age beforehand. It was why he did a double take when he realized they were striding through the white metal doors leading into the protected pediatric cancer wing of the hospital. He wanted to ask questions, but for someone who typically enjoyed dropping words with the kind of gusto compared to Hitler, the redhead's lips had been peculiarly sealed. Maybe Roxas was supposed to be the one inquiring about his sibling? It wasn't that he didn't care. Roxas just had the grace of a ninety-three year old woman on roller skates, and he didn't want to make an even bigger ass of himself.

So, because of this self-deprecation where he wasn't certain how to handle anything, Roxas silently tailed Axel and counted the tiling beneath his shoes. Children were talking to nurses and being guided in and out of rooms, and the only time he bothered to look up was when they made their way past what appeared to be a playroom with windows for walls. There were endless combinations of colors, and had he not known better, then he could have sworn they were walking through a stagnant elementary school. Roxas didn't know where the abrupt pang in his lower abdomen derived from, but he was suddenly beginning to regret the decision to come with Axel. He didn't want to be around sick children. All it did was induce a strange sense of shame.

"My sister is deaf." Axel finally spoke up after what felt like the longest bout of silence on the man's part. He was relieved at first, but then the relief was suddenly shifted into surprise. They were stopped outside an open door. "I'll get her attention and just kind of talk you through it. For some reason, imbecilic fuck wads are allowed to breed and their offspring can't seem to comprehend the simplicity that is human communication without the spoken word. Rudeness and ignorance comes hand in hand, but I can put even your common sense above offending her."

"I can wait out here," Roxas offered, suddenly unsure. "If it'd make it easier…"

"I'm not worried about it." A grin found his lips. "Though you're about as expressive as the Queen's Guard, you should know that expressions are important. If you look at her the way you look at—well, _everyone_, then, you're probably going to make a little girl cry."

"Wait, how old is she?" Roxas was suddenly filled with dread when Axel began walking into hospital room, and he had no choice but to follow him. "What's her name?"

As soon as he turned the corner he was greeted by the sight of what he thought was a spider monkey flinging itself at Axel as if it had taken on the motive of a face hugger. There was a crop of the blackest hair he had ever seen in the entirety of his life peeking out from above Axel's shoulder, and when what he assumed was the little sister brought her face back, Roxas was mesmerized. Blue eyes unlike anything he had ever seen, and she was smiling with the kind of brilliance he had only seen on Axel Diamond's face. She was a china doll. Roxas was looking at an animated doll too perfect for words, and he was certain the Diamond siblings had been brought to earth from the deepest depths of space solely to let the rest of the human race understand how inferior it was.

Axel set her down on the bed she had leapt from and turned toward Roxas. The signing he remembered from the first time they had met on the bridge began to fluidly make its way into what he knew was one of the most peculiar forms of communication he had ever been exposed to. It was intriguing, and he couldn't wrap his brain around the kind of process it took to be able to both speak and communicate with hands and expressions. He knew it wasn't uncommon, but there was still some underlying element he both respected and was intimidated by. Signing meant Axel was hypersensitive to human emotion, and that was terrifying.

"Roxas Eames," and it was the first time he watched Axel sign his name, "this is Xion Diamond, and because you asked, she's twelve."

Keeping in mind what Axel had said earlier on about his face, Roxas managed a small, friendly smile that felt foreign on his face, and when Xion smiled back and signed, he turned to Axel. "So, how do I tell her it's nice to meet her?"

He wasn't sure what he had said, but Axel gave a full pause of surprise only to look Roxas over with keen interest and the sort of perplexed yet genuine smile he had never seen on the man's face before. "Let me show you."


	7. Mermaid Lagoon

_**Chapter Seven: Mermaid Lagoon **_

Roxas had never been very successful at understanding the proper formula for friendship. Then again, he was beginning to wonder how there even could be a proper way to make friends because humans were vastly different no matter how much he tried to simplify his species. That reasoning was the only way he could comprehend Axel's abrupt invitation to hang out with him on a lazy Sunday afternoon. This unexpected solicitation occurred only a handful of days after being introduced to Axel's little sister, but Roxas couldn't bring himself to avoid the voicemail. Not when he had sat beside the man and clumsily stumbled through sign language in front of an understanding thirteen year old girl fighting for her right to live a healthy life. He had been hunting for comradery, and that moment between the three of them had synced in a way that left starlight in his brain tissue. Never before had he experienced such a rush of conflicting emotions, and Roxas had made a point to walk behind Axel when they left. He'd started to cry, and he didn't know why.

"I'm cleaning out my closet." Axel paused, and Roxas saw it coming eight miles away. "That's a really good song."

"And you need company for that because—" He repositioned the phone as he rolled over onto his back, waiting.

"Cleaning is mind-numbing, and I'm a fucking scrounger for human interaction that isn't that of my albatross lodgers."

The blond wished he had something on his agenda to come back with. Something that he could toss Axel's way, spin across his tongue as if discerning whether or not that mundane task seemed more promising than hanging out with the redhead before reluctantly agreeing to drive all the way to his house. That being said, Roxas didn't have a life. So, his next words were coated in the kind of enthusiasm he hated himself for.

"I can be there in five minutes."

"See you in five minutes, then."

Silence rang through his skull when Axel hung up, and he stared at the ceiling with a frown. Even when one of his mother's dogs scrambled onto his low rise mattress he didn't move to acknowledge the animal. Someone was bound to text him within the next hour inquiring about another party, another line, another throw down with his liver; but his embedded obligation to his friends was growing conflicted. Roxas wasn't sure what he wanted out of life at this point, but the longer the default _nothing _hung over him the denser his own self-disregard became. Roxas needed out of his room before he began to internally monologue about his life, which was why he rolled off the bed and began the hunt for boots.

* * *

He wasn't sure if he wished he was surprised when he found Axel Diamond's collection of metallic platform shoes. Either way, the shock was null. Tossed into the depths of his closet; there was an impressive array of feet adornments covering the entire spectrum of height and ankle restraint. They were glossed with a sheen Roxas didn't even want to consider seeing exposed to sunlight, and when he finally brought a single shoe into his hands he wondered if this was what it would've been like for the Knights Templar to possess the Holy Grail. He squinted at the back of the cluttered closet and clenched the item tightly. Again, he was impressed by Axel even though his fashion choices were a notch beneath infanticide; and again, he found himself coming to terms with how little they knew about one another.

"So, you found them."

Axel's voice was coated in sticky amusement as he leaned over Roxas' beanie clad head. He wasn't having a good hair day, and when Axel had attempted to snatch it off his crown there had been the kind of life and death fight where Roxas had been choking on strangled whines Axel would eventually refer to as 'pitifully puppy.' When Roxas found himself on his back with Axel purposely dragging his fingers over the top of his knit covered skull as a way to taunt him until the reveal, the blond had affectionately punched him in the sternum. There had been a cough, a forfeit, and surprisingly an apology from Roxas because—_I didn't mean to hit that hard!_

"They're impressive." Roxas held the shoes up and squinted at them appraisingly.

"Seeing you pilfer through my closet is nerve-racking. I don't even know what's in there." Axel sat down on the outside and watched Roxas' hands begin pawing through a box of newspaper wrapped items. "I don't think I've been through any of those boxes since I moved in here."

Roxas released an acknowledging hum. "How long ago was that?"

"Three years this August." Axel's hands dragged along his sideburns that were coming in like well-groomed strips of masculinity. At least, they were nice in Roxas' opinion, but he figured anything on Axel would look nice. "Why am I letting you go through my shit again?"

"You're on edge," Roxas said knowingly to which Axel replied with a faux-impressed look. "Don't give me that face. I'm pointing out the obvious because I know how much you _appreciate_ it."

"Redundancy gives my bits the fever."

"_Oh_—" Roxas pretended to fan himself like a women in need of smelling salts. "Oh, I know."

Axel's laugh penetrated the David Bowie discography trilling through the background; though Roxas knew he was playing it as a form of mockery, he wasn't bothered. The next item to fall into his hands was a blocky chunk no bigger than the width of his two palms placed side by side. What threw Roxas off was the impressive weight, and he wondered if he had stumbled across another lump of Axel Diamond gold. He held it up so Axel could see it, and the other man gave a thoughtful look before shrugging as if to inform him he didn't know either. They were both going to be pleasantly surprised, and Roxas decided that was enough of an initiative to begin unwrapping whatever he was holding onto. This was followed by an extended pause.

"Erotic vibrating beads…" Roxas' enunciation of the words was slow as if he had been ordered to address a toddler for its wrong doings. To add emphasis on the mortifying moment where Axel had apparently stopped breathing, Roxas said it again. "_Erotic vibrating beads_…"

Earth stood still.

The scramble for the box was animalistic, and Roxas was certain he had seen Hollywood renditions of demonically possessed human beings more graceful than Axel as he threw himself toward the closet. He climbed over Roxas with his spidery limbs, and solely to spite the man and his degradation Roxas shoved his hands into the box as fast as humanely possible before letting out the kind of sobbing laughter that he hadn't heard from himself until that point. Never before in his life had he worked his fingers so fast to tear away paper. Christmas hadn't even spun the kind of energy he was exerting, and when Axel let out an angry grunt when Roxas tore away paper to reveal a purple vibrator Roxas nearly screamed into the knuckles he instantly shoved into his mouth. Kicking back the box as a merciful white flag, he fell onto his back and moved his hand from his mouth in order to exhale another set of laughter that sprung tears to his eyes.

"It's the entire box!"

"Back the fuck off my collection—" But he was unhinged from his own sentence when Roxas released a dying horse noise. Axel wasn't sure if Roxas was on the brink of hysterical crying or if he was still amused. "Could you be a little more immature about the situation while you're at it? Your approach to human sexuality reflects the age of someone who hasn't even seen their first pubic hair."

Roxas was panting for air when he propped himself up on an elbow. "You're so fucking embarrassed right now."

"I have no reason to be embarrassed about having _sex toys_."

"What the fuck_ ever_." Roxas sat upright and fixed the sagging beanie he had nearly knocked off during their minor altercation. "You're redder than your god damn hair. If it makes you feel _any_ better, then you should know this made my year. No, this has made my life. All my aspirations are now void of meaning because I just found Axel Diamond's vibrating anal beads, and there is nothing left in the world for me to conquer. Tutankhamen, eat your dusty jarred heart out because that golden sarcophagus doesn't have shit on what I just found in this closet. Where do you keep the gimp suit?"

"The distance between where anal beads and a gimp suit sit on the spectrum of kink could only be compared to France and Hong Kong." Axel shut the box with stiff shoulders and thrust it beneath his pile of platform shoes. The sight alone was enough to reignite Roxas' laughter. "Could you shove something in your aperture before I do you the fucking favor?"

He wasn't sure where the nerve had derived from, but the blond arched an eyebrow expectantly. "Then, I'm waiting for that favor because there's no way in hell I'll stop laughing about this for the rest of my life. I'll be in my hospital bed with inevitable cancer cackling to spite you."

"Oh, _really_?"

That was when Roxas found his heart in his throat. He could've reached down and plucked the frightened muscle from his esophagus the way a hand retrieves an apple from a tree. This was all because Axel had the primal speed of a feline and had somehow managed to pull a 180 and shove Roxas onto his back, again. The others knees were settled on either side of Roxas' protruding hipbones, and without shame the towering figure with his cutting emeralds that burnt up Roxas' skin upon eye contact planted a hand on Roxas' shoulder. The positioning wasn't convenient because-though Axel's closet was the largest in the house and seemingly spacious—the closet was also crammed tight with miscellaneous items that pricked into Roxas' skin without forgiveness. Not to mention Axel was gangly, which he was beginning to realize didn't mean he wasn't heavy.

Roxas was the first to speak. "There is not enough space in here for you to be a jackass!"

He attempted to sit upright, but Axel had pinned him. The air in the closet seemed to be depleting with every nervous inhale he sucked through his nose, and he bit his tongue to hide any prerequisites for a full course of panic. Someone had grabbed him by the hair and submerged him in a bathtub with the kind of intent meant to leave him blue faced and waterlogged like the boy beneath the bed. He was anticipating his body to become the haven for an entire cityscape worth of squirming maggots eating him for nourishment and whirling their grubby frames within his fingertips, popping free from the underneath of his nails.

A mysterious thump rang through the closet behind Axel, but neither of them paid attention to whatever his leg had managed to throw off balance in the 7x6 setting. What Roxas was concentrating on was the sharply stoic demeanor on Axel's part as he brought his fingers to the blond's lips and began to push between them. At first, Roxas struggled beneath him with a prideful resistance that was screeching at the top of its lungs and releasing sharp punches of desperation, but there was a link too weak to keep his reservation together. Deep down there was the need to drag his tongue along the underside of the man's digits and hum around them until releasing his fingers with a wet pop bound to resonate. Both of them needed to be openly aware of how he was nothing but a cock hungry slut ready for the garbage disposal.

Roxas desperately shook his head the second fingertips pushed against his teeth, but Axel freed his shoulder and grasped onto his then beanie-less hair with the kind of clench that made Roxas release an appreciative gasp. This noise was a form of segue for Axel's insertion where fingers found the inside of Roxas' mouth. The teenager surged beneath him with the arch of his lower back because he had something of Axel inside him. It was the kind of mind contraction Roxas could only respond to with a puffing exhale through his nose and sudden enthusiastic sucking on those two digits.

The saltiness of skin fanned out across his taste buds, and Axel's stare was the kind of raw intensity that forced Roxas to cover his eyes with the back of his arm. He was embarrassed to the point of wanting to shove the rest of Axel's hand down his throat so he could choke to death on a fist and be done with himself. The sexual tension between them had been thick enough to gather and sell on eBay, but he was still having a difficult time justifying why this was happening or why he was completely okay with sucking off fingers. He knew nothing about it was immediately gratifying, but Roxas took that into consideration. Maybe Axel didn't want immediacy. Maybe his interest in anything remotely sexual wasn't built on conventional stilts.

"You should know I don't use those toys on myself."

At that, Axel's grip on blond hair tightened directly before he slammed the boy's occipital onto the hardwood flooring of the closet. Roxas emitted the kind of noise that was nothing but a groan only to suddenly realize the hundred and eighty pounds of Axel had vanished into the main room. He was caught up in regaining the rhythm of his breathing, and the fingerprints of the man were roughly embedded into the sensitivities of his tongue. With an exhale, he rolled over onto his side for a minute and stared at the grain of the wood that his nose was only inches away from. If someone had banged his face against the wall and forced nose cartilage into his brain, then he might have been happy. That being said, there was no phantom hand in the closet to assist him. He didn't have the propensity for that kind of personal violence.

Axel's voice was completely unaffected when it carried into Roxas' temporary self-imprisonment. "Can you believe I wore these pants? Did someone baptize me in idiocy for a year?"

* * *

He liked how Axel's true colors were loud. Loud and beyond the human capabilities of comprehension, and he was mesmerized by the possibility of being one of the first to see his entire spectrum. They never spoke of the closet incident again, and though that should have been Roxas' clue to remain as distant as possible, he couldn't help himself. Not when there was a never ceasing train of entertainment when he found himself dragging feet into Axel's house where Demyx was typically staring at the television after his life guard shift and Xigbar was making suspicious appointments on his Blackberry. They were the kind of appointments where Roxas had to wonder how many times he had watched the movie Scarface because he was a little too Tony Montana at times; especially with his fluent Spanish and 'fuck all' attitude. More often than not it made him wonder what Xigbar was afraid of.

Sometimes they drank and sometimes they smoked, but Axel was overly cautious about doing anything else around Roxas. He wasn't sure if the redhead was dealing with preemptive guilt or not, but the only times he watched Axel snort up crushed pills were when Roxas was a millisecond away from passing out on the bed Axel never touched him on. That's what he adored about Axel Diamond. Other than the one time he had been provoked like a skittish tiger—he never sought to put his hands on Roxas, and there was a level of comfort there. Not only that, but the midafternoons when he woke up to either his face buried in Axel's spine or a feelings jar settled on the nightstand were the kind of moments when the ambience was driven by dust filtering through the sun spilling free from a window. He breathed and forgot about the fact Axel couldn't get him to eat more than a bite full when they were together. He forgot the knowing look, and he forgot the breathy sigh of disappointment and he forgot-forgot-forgot. He loved forgetting but he loved being buried in the moment where his sternum melted because he was so _there_. He was there with Axel.

The feelings jar that belonged to Axel was full of gold glitter, and when he didn't have it in him to leave the bed he remained on his back and held it above his face with shaking hands. His blood sugar was never right anymore, and he blamed himself for not going home where he could eat in private. Muscles were yet to start atrophying, which meant he was in a good place. That being said, he was entranced by how fitting gold was for Axel Diamond. Everything about it was glimmeringly beautiful. He wasn't sure why he wanted to cry, but knowing Axel wasn't keen on living was enough to spring free emotions he anchored down. Sailing on emotions without knowing the ropes was dangerous, and he had to force himself to rationalize. He didn't know Axel, so why was he so sad? He couldn't wrap his head around the fact that just maybe they were one in the same.

"No, no, you cerebrally disturbed nugget." Axel grinned as he held Roxas' hands and attempted to fix his fingers to make the proper formation for the letter Z. "How your motor skills pain me. They're the bane of my existence."

"Does it keep you up at night?" Roxas was smiling as Axel, again, attempted to push down his index finger. "Do you lose sleep over my inability to learn a secondary form of communication in under a month?"

"When you're asleep I climb onto the roof and monologue about it to the moon."

"That's just plain romantic."

Axel fleetingly dragged the tip of his tongue across the underside of his upper lip with a subdued smile, his hands still working on Roxas disobliging fingers. "Are you into that capricious bullshit with all its spontaneity and meaningless, self-gratifying whimsy?"

"As you can see," Roxas said, letting out a fake gasp of surprise when his hands finally settled properly. "I'm all about being _spontaneous_."

They knew that was the biggest sack of shit Roxas could've ever said, but Axel didn't psychoanalyze. His preoccupation with making Roxas the fastest mediocre conversationalist via ASL was all consuming. Axel wouldn't tell Roxas why other than that Xion had found him pleasant to be around—which earned a snorting noise from Roxas—and as her older brother Axel couldn't deny his little sister the right to see him for shits and giggles. That being said, Axel knew more than anyone else how pleased the little girl would be if Roxas walked into her hospital room without having to constantly turn to Axel for translation. Not only that, but who could deny a sickly child something as simple as the ability to communicate with someone she found interesting? It was why Roxas hadn't shoved Axel off when the man insisted he learn the basics. Even Roxas wasn't that self-absorbed.

"So," and Roxas began this conversation while drinking coffee in Axel's KIA Soul. They hadn't slept in twenty-four hours, and he still had to go help Hayner finalize furniture decisions. He was more than certain his face was dissolving, and the fatigue induced salivating had begun. "How long has Xion been sick?"

He was flicking his tongue through the foam like a mentally incapacitated dog, and he was beginning to think the weed they'd smoked was laced with rat poisoning. His mouth was numb and he kept shuddering, which more than likely was the effect of an over indulgence in sleep deprivation. Roxas finally took a sip of the searing liquid only to regret the decision when he blistered his throat.

"Since my parents adopted her." Axel rubbed his temples as he stared straight ahead at the closed nail salon he had parked in front of. "So, since she was four? Deaf and leukemia; she didn't catch a break."

"Has she always been sick?"

There was clearly an internal war brewing inside Axel.

"She was diagnosed with leukemia when she was three, and the birth mother couldn't handle the emotional stability or finances needed to care for her prom night baby. She pawned Xion off on the state. She was seventeen and did a lot of narcotics."

Roxas parted his lips, but he wasn't sure what to say. Sometimes there was the impossible to refute reality that someone had been handed the worst cards life could give; but then again, Roxas didn't want to include Xion's deafness into the equation of horribleness. Not when she brightly communicated with her older brother in the kind of way that seemed far more expressive than he had ever been with a functioning eardrum and trained tongue. He had watched her blues expand and narrow during her conversations with Axel, and whenever she was particularly animated her chest lifted as if she had just finished running a race. She was thin and seemed impossibly frail, but in one look Roxas knew she could lift a car before him.

"I didn't know she was adopted."

"We both are."

The blond sipped his coffee, scalded his throat again and sat in drowning silence before he said anything. "I should've guessed since you two look nothing alike."

Axel brushed his fingers through his hair before lounging back in his seat and bringing back his legs until he had managed to turn into the human accordion. Before long the limbs were extended and the soles of his booted feet were settled on either side of the wheel. Maybe it was the fatigue from too much marijuana or maybe it was because they were both internally exhausted. But if it was the latter, then Roxas knew they were only expressing it because they understood. The constant feigning of perfection—though, their genres of perfection were opposites—was rotten enough to curdle organs. Roxas had once been scared about standing on the pinnacle of one of the earth's poles for the entirety of his life, but when he looked at Axel's blood shot eyes that glowed with Christmas complimentary colors there was mutualism. Even if he was on the North Pole and Axel was on the South there was just enough empathy for them to embrace the other as company.

Without thinking, Roxas set down his cup and snapped his finger for Axel's attention. His hands began to weave through one another, and it wasn't long before he had asked in hesitant sign language, "_How old were you_?"

Axel stared at Roxas with his head tilted back against his seat. At first, Roxas didn't think he was going to respond to him, but suddenly his hands were moving with a spidery grace. His expression carried melancholy, but there was so much beauty in the motion of his arms and fingers.

"_Ten years old. My birth mother tried to sell me to a man_."

There was a cutting moment when Roxas could only place his hands back down onto his lap and stare at Axel Diamond with the realization that everything he had envied was the comeliest façade to ever make love with the earth's surface. Nothing was as it had seemed, and he figured that was life. He should have known, and though the illusion between them wasn't necessarily broken it had frayed. Roxas had opened the flood gates for his curiosities, sympathies; and in that moment his chest was on fire. Though he wanted to believe Axel was no longer suffering because obviously amazing people had raised him into adulthood, there was still the insatiable craving to cup the sides of his face and work their lips together until he could taste every encompassing memory.

He hurt-hurt-hurt.

Axel Diamond had been hurt, and suddenly they were both barefacedly human.

"When you feel things it goes right…" and Axel reached out to place his hand along Roxas' cheekbone. He dragged his thumb along the dark circle beneath a glimmering blue eye. "….here."

Roxas didn't move, he couldn't speak, and he picked up his hands so that he could sign because his tongue was a stunned mole. Even the method of physical communication was strained because he was trembling. "_I like it when you touch me_."

Axel didn't bother to pause. "Have you ever liked it when others touch you?"

"_Never_."

He slowly retracted his hand, and Roxas knew the redhead could see right through his thick skull. "You're one of the most devastating individuals I've ever been fortunate enough to befriend."

"We're friends?"

Axel seemed to struggle when he broke their eye contact. He retrieved his own coffee cup, and the way he chewed on his thoughts was homage to his defined jawline. There was something consistently careful about him, and Roxas noticed it as Axel fought the waterfall of words he was so accustomed to retching at everyone.

"We're friends."

Roxas had never known what it was like to have a real friend before, but he figured the simmering within his lower abdomen had something to do with it. The way Axel made him genuinely laugh until he startled himself also had to be a slice of the friendship criteria, and he suddenly realized he was still a baby. At eighteen years old he knew absolutely nothing about the world around him, and he had spent so long preoccupied with the concept of being legal meaning he was completely grownup. He knew nothing about love or pain or the way the earth sat on its axis, but then he looked at Axel who seemed to know everything. A wise man once said nothing, and Roxas had originally been lead to believe Axel never shut up. But he was only making personal observations. What Axel Diamond really knew were things he would never exploit. He would never have a sap story or use his life as a crutch, and Roxas suddenly set his cup aside because he needed to lean over his knees.

"What time did you have to meet up with the Roxas friend? God—what an annoying specimen that one is. If I had to pick between hearing his uninspiring sentiments forever or being surrounded by the sound of Gregorian chant, then you bet your ass I'd be two-stepping into the nearest church. "

Roxas suddenly laughed before groaning at the thought. "Probably now."

From their spot in front of the grimy nail salon that would soon be lined with women chomping gum and spraying their hair until they looked like 80s metal vixens Axel drove him to the ritzy complex of townhouses. They were lined up like birdhouses with driveways bigger than their front yards, and Roxas didn't want any of it. Having his own place had once seemed like a spine unraveling escape. He had dreamt of stretching out on the floor of his own living room and knowing no one could dictate any of his immediate actions; but there was Hayner's car, and there was Hayner's mother. Roxas hated both his father and his friend's mother because he was sure his dad had fucked her stupid the night before. She was going to wave at him with diamonds on her fingers most definitely not bought by her husband, and then she would hug him until he got a face full of her breast implants. She liked to think he wanted to fuck her the way his dad did, and Roxas wondered if she had caught herpes.

"I'm going to run away," Roxas announced to Axel, and when he said those words the air lifted from his lungs and he turned to look at the redhead who was occupied by his paper cup.

"Are you now?" He finally stopped in front of the sidewalk before Roxas' future prison, and Axel cast him a wicked grin. "Tell me where you're going because if it's Neverland, then I've already been there. It's nothing but a bunch of pixie orgies and unpleasant disorientation. I did a lot of 'shrooms my freshman year, honestly. That's the metaphor there."

"It has to be better than this."

He was still grinning like the black dahlia. "Drug parallels aside, probably."

"I hate Hayner."

"I don't even know him, and I hate him. Can we just blame everything on Hayner because I think that would make me feel much better about having to be juxtaposed associated with him via your pretty mug?" At that Axel slammed his hands onto the steering wheel. "God dammit, Hayner, the fucking Holocaust was not a good idea!"

Roxas parted his lips and wondered if Axel was out of his mind before the next words spontaneously burst from his mouth. "And he had to provoke the seven plagues of Egypt!"

"Let my people go, Hayner!"

He raised both of his hands as if surrendering. "Don't even get me started on Hurricane Katrina."

Axel snorted. "You mean Hurricane Hayner?"

Roxas released an exasperated sigh. "The Great London Fire."

By then the redhead had put the car in park and was prepared to keep this going. "World War One."

"The Children's Crusade."

"Quasimodo never getting with the hot gypsy broad."

"The Dark Ages."

"The Black Death."

"Infanticide in general."

At that, Hayner appeared in what was technically _their_ front door, and Roxas knew the fun was over. Glancing over at Axel with a sharp exhale, Roxas grabbed his coffee, thanked Axel for the ride, and abandoned what had seemed like a safe haven. Though, before Axel drove off, he rolled down his window and leaned out toward Roxas with a rather glum expression. It was a sharp contrast to the smile he had been wearing right before he had stepped out of the KIA.

"You know—out of all the things we've blamed Hayner for at least one of the tragedies is true."

Smiling over his cup, Roxas took in a deep sticky breath of Indian summer air. "And which one is that?"

"Your current misery."

Roxas' smile disappeared. "Not really—"

But Axel was already rolling up the glass.

* * *

There was the dilemma of having to move his things into his new house, and then there was the even bigger dilemma of needing assistance. A majority of his furniture was going to be fresh from the store, but there were still boxes upon boxes of memorabilia from his life he only pretended to give a second thought about. He needed someone he could trust because the real issue with moving wasn't necessarily his material items. There was something much more significant buried beneath nearly every space capable of being considered a hiding spot, and he couldn't simply bring anyone in. There was so much there, and he needed to get it out as fast as humanely possible. His trunk wasn't big enough. He didn't even have a backseat, and there was only one person he knew who seemed hardened enough to deal with his own fissures.

"I was just thinking about the WWE and religion. If a person accepts Pro Wrestling as real, that means that God is real." Demyx was sitting on the ground beside Roxas' feet staring straight ahead when he began dishing out the first thing to pop into his brain. "This rooms smells like bloated corpse and Listerine."

Roxas turned and looked at Axel who could only shrug. "Can we even deny it does?"

The worst part was how they were all completely sober, and Roxas' phone had spent the last hour vibrating between him and Axel all due to him having refused to reply to Hayner since the night before. He could sense Axel's irritation. He knew who it was solely because—after the third missed call—he had snatched up Roxas' phone and scanned the touch screen. The man's disgust had radiated, and it was one of the rare moments where Axel wasn't going out of his way to disguise the degree of his genuine emotion.

"Just turn off your phone," Axel said, sipping from his can of Budweiser. "Do it for the children in Africa he starved."

Roxas grabbed his phone and fiddled with the screen until he managed to put it on silent. "My dick needs a No Vacancy sign."

There was a scoff from Axel. "Where was I when you took that oath of celibacy?"

"Probably being very _not_ celibate somewhere else."

He grinned. "Little did you know I'm a born again virgin."

The blond's phone was soon set aside, and he looked at Axel with a raised brow. "Please let me take your virginity. That would be the _greatest _honor."

At that, Demyx's throat seemed to deflate. "It's like you two stare at each other and someone pulls out their acoustic guitar to cover Celine Dion."

"Romantic," Axel said simply, and he turned his attention back to Roxas. "Want to go upstairs?"

As if on cue, Xigbar appeared in the living room with a bowl in hand. He pursed his lips before speaking. "Chef Boyardee tastes like scabs in a can."

Roxas was soon on his feet, and he made his way to Axel's bedroom as if it were his own. With the man trailing behind him he eventually made it to the bed partially covered in the remains of Axel's early morning outfit indecision. Blindly kicking a mountain of hangers off the mattress once he was lying flat on his stomach, he wasn't surprised when Axel collapsed beside him.

Suddenly, Roxas propped himself up on his arms. "Can I ask you a favor?"

"I swear to God if it's not you asking me to assassinate Hayner, then I will be moderately displeased."

"Well, sorry to be a Debbie Downer, but it's not that."

Axel turned away from him with a weak sigh. It was girlish, and Roxas laughed. "I thought we had something in common."

"Trust me, the murderous intent is still mutual, but I need help moving into my new place, and you're the only person I could stand going through my things."

"Is this like," and Axel paused to gather his words, "some kind of scale balancer for you finding my sex toys?"

"If it makes you feel any better, then sure."

Rolling Roxas over onto his back, Axel leaned over the teenager and squinted at him as if attempting to smell out any dishonesty. "I'm the big spoon if we get drunk enough to platonically cuddle tonight."

The sigh from Roxas was rooted in annoyance. "That's the condition?"

"Asserting my masculinity—yeah."

"Then fine, you fucking tool."

"_Excellent_."


	8. Neverland

**_Chapter Eight: Neverland_**

Roxas couldn't remember the last time he'd allowed the cleaning lady into his bedroom. At first he had told her there was no reason to clean his closet, and then he had claimed the underneath of his bed was also off limits simply because he didn't see a reason for her to drag out luggage in order to vacuum up a week's collection of miniscule dust. This pattern of her job seemingly growing less and less strenuous by the month eventually morphed into Roxas completely cutting her off from his living space and only letting her into his bathroom. The squat woman with four children and apparently one more on the way had good-naturedly rolled her eyes at the blond every time he shooed her away. She had teenage sons. She understood how Roxas was at an age when privacy was of an utmost importance, which was why she never questioned him.

Sometimes, he wished she had. Had she lifted up his bed skirt and yanked out the blockade of ancient Hasbro board games that were a mockery of his childhood, then maybe someone would've been notified and he could have been locked up with the reassuring slam of stark white doors. Had she mentioned it to his mother or even his father, then there was that undeniable chance they would've jumped on making sure he was stable enough not to outright embarrass them. Not that he really believed that mattered since they were more than capable of embarrassing themselves without his help. For some reason, though, he knew it would all land on him; and he would be the talk of the town. What they did was apparently void of public attention because they were no longer frankly undefined: that was why people cared about him to the degree they did. Anything could happen to him, at this point. His father was the CEO of a slave ship. His mother was a gorgeous trophy wife. He was a nobody.

Axel had managed to goad Roxas into drunk spooning. Of course, whether or not he had goaded didn't matter much because the pair was particularly good at subconsciously making their way closer to one another once asleep. Roxas found a substantial amount of humiliating comfort when the redhead latched onto him from behind and molded himself against his back. Axel's breathing was always strangely warm, but when it blew against those wispy blond baby hairs on the back of his neck he somehow wanted to go from back to front to front to front almost immediately. The urge to cling to the man was obnoxious, and he knew that those moments were anything but romantic. It was a platonic almost familial yearning he couldn't place. Roxas couldn't remember the last time his mother had showed him a single speck of affection; he didn't even want to consider his father. There had never been any glue to his household, which was a kinder way of saying there had never been love. He'd never been loved, and sometimes he wanted to cry when Axel told him he was beautiful in that sleepy unconscious murmur because he knew it wasn't true. He just knew.

When they woke up sometime around noon Roxas knew Axel wouldn't find him beautiful by the end of the day. The internal ugly he tried to retch up would be a very tangible thing that the man wouldn't be able to delude himself into believing was a sun blocked by the overcast. For Roxas this was the end of something he had genuinely enjoyed. It was a tragic car accident in the rain before a wedding; it was the gas leak in the baby's nursery; it was the fermenting dead body in the apartment upstairs leaking onto the kitchen table; it was the fingers slammed into a car door with a resonating bone shatter. Summer was almost over, and he had just sat around with the redhead as if he were his admissions counselor and summoned up a doable class schedule full of bullshit general education classes. Roxas had placed the keys of his new townhouse onto his key ring along with the keys to his car, gym locker, and the safe he kept his Rolex in. Axel had been the vacation from the life he was doomed to live through because he was not Naminé. He didn't have her selfish strength to do as he pleased.

"You want to get something to eat?" Axel sleepily asked him even though he already knew the answer.

"No," Roxas tugged himself out of the man's arms, and he made himself sit upright at the end of the bed. "I kind of just want to get this over with, so that I don't have to see Hayner any longer than what's absolutely necessary."

There was a compliant grunt on Axel's part, and he rolled himself over onto his side before slipping his head beneath a pillow. As predicted, he momentarily fell back asleep, and Roxas went for his leather overnight bag with the bare sleeping over necessities. It was either get ready then or end up threatening Demyx with a switchblade to let him into the bathroom. He wasn't nearly tall enough or intimidating the way Axel was when it came to asserting authority over who got to use the bathroom next. There had been a couple mornings when he had played witness to what appeared to be the great Trojan War in the middle of the upstairs hallway all because Demyx had spent longer than thirty minutes singing in the shower.

"It's like a gay porno," was the only thing Xigbar had said with his toothbrush in mouth and foam spittle spraying out onto the wrestling half-naked Demyx and shirtless Axel. The one eyed drug lord was the only person smart enough to use the kitchen sink.

"We could always film it and sell it online."

Xigbar had just patted Roxas' back. "An entrepreneur, aren't you?"

He forced himself to fix his hair to some degree, but showering was really overrated when he hung out with Axel and his housemates. Cologne covered up any stank of spilt beer and the redhead's black cloves, and if he put on enough swipes of deodorant, then he was certain he'd be okay until the next morning. The rolling out of bed look was genuinely in again that season anyway, and he was okay with looking somewhat like a boy band wet dream. Long ago he had personified the entire concept of a 90s group, and he knew all he'd have to do was dance in the rain while wearing a white t-shirt to gain himself a ten year recording contract. Auto-tune was a blessing because Roxas was pretty certain the only tune he could carry was that pitched noise he muffled when coming.

Before they went to clean out Roxas' room Axel decided to wake up in the kind of good mood that was disgusting in contrast to Roxas' hangover and dropped blood sugar headache. Coffee typically fixed both of those problems. That being said, he was yet to ride up to the Starbucks drive through when Axel began parading around his bedroom singing along to Jermaine Stewart's _We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off_ and smoking on the roach from the night before. The other sharp contrast between Roxas and Axel was the fact that Axel could move himself in the kind of way that wasn't human considering his limbs should've been the key to every klutzy action in the world. Not only that, but he _could _sing. Roxas had never heard him do it seriously, but when he sang along to music in the car he managed to make every song his own. Whether it was 80s pop ballads about conversation before sex or the latest Kanye West single, he made it so believable. Roxas was beginning to think there wasn't something Axel couldn't do.

* * *

"Your house is fucking ridiculous."

That was all Axel could say after they'd drove through the gate to Roxas' seemingly apple pie community. Even Roxas knew their home was outlandish, but he was so accustomed to the modern castle his father had constructed the second his mother had gotten knocked up with him that it took him a couple seconds to recall that he wasn't normal in any aspect. The family home with its twenty foot ceilings and winding double staircase that met a person the second they strode through the foyer was a monster. Roxas couldn't see it as anything but because the grandeur had never been impressive to him. Money was never the source of any fascination for him, which was to be expected considering it was just something he _knew_.

"Tell me about it," he muttered when Axel parked in their driveway.

No one was home, which was for the best. He'd already figured out his mom's and dad's schedule that day. While his father was plowing his secretary through his desk during a lunch break, his mother was sitting in an upscale restaurant with her army of fellow housewives gossiping and eating vegan panini. From there they would blow up massive credit card bills before having pool boy rendezvous and meeting back up for more dainty twenty plate dinners in another restaurant requiring reservations. All his mother ever had to do was drop her last name and she had a place to gallivant with people like Hayner's, Pence's and Olette's mothers. Roxas didn't understand how they could all be such fabulous friends when it was obvious they hated each other because their husbands traded them out faster than a twelve year old with their first Pokémon starter deck.

The sharp whistle Axel gave when they stepped inside was quickly cut off by the scampering of five sets of paws and yipping. Roxas made a face the second his mother's army of dogs turned the corner, but the second they approached he was on both knees cooing and coddling the puppies that were barely puppies anymore. They'd always be puppies to Roxas, though. It was why he rubbed on all of their ears and didn't even regard the way Axel was laughing at him because—_that's the sweetest I've ever seen you be_. The dogs were a nuisance on most days, but he had to admit he was going to miss them curling up with him during those cool winter nights.

"My bedroom's upstairs," Roxas said with a small smile once he was able to shove off most of the dogs and let them indulge in sniffing Axel out. Before the pair even made it toward the stairs Axel had snatched up one of the smaller of the pack and politely asked her not to pee on him as small dogs tended to like to. She didn't.

"Is anyone home?" That was the first question Axel had as they strode down the upstairs hallway. Roxas' parent's bedroom was in the wing opposite to his, which was a blessing for the sake of privacy. "Or are they indifferent to strikingly attractive redheaded men in their gaudy residence?"

"Indifferent, but don't be surprised if my mom tries to seduce you into her bedroom."

Axel dropped the dog that scampered away as Roxas opened his bedroom door. The idea had him thoughtfully rubbing his chin as if it was intriguing. "_Really_ now?"

"I'm like over ninety-nine percent certain my mother has herpes," and he stepped into his bedroom. "Don't get excited unless you're on the lookout for one hell of an STI."

"The crystal ball didn't say anything about that, so I think I'm good."

"That's what I thought."

There was something strangely revealing about any bedroom, and the way Roxas could see Axel processing the electronic-centric location let him know he was deciphering things almost immediately. His bedroom wasn't particularly personal, but that was more than likely because Roxas had never sought out a personal relationship with himself. Boring navy walls with a mounted flat screen and shelf dedicated to his iHome, the abundance of DVDs he'd only watched once, and an Xbox along with the rest of his gaming paraphernalia. There weren't any posters on the wall aside from a couple of pieces Naminé had painted for him that he couldn't help but have framed, and then there were the lines of liquor bottles: a juvenile testament to his alcohol abuse. All in all his room was about as uninspiring as Axel's was inspiring. He had to wonder why they were friends.

"Would you look at that?" Axel was smirking as he made his way to Roxas' nightstand. "You kept the feelings jar."

Roxas watched as he shook it only to set it back down and return to the front of the teenager with a sudden switch in demeanor. He had somewhat relaxed in the foreign territory, which was the only reason Roxas' shoulders had dipped back down to a less attractive posture. Then would've been a good time to explain exactly why he had invited Axel and Axel alone to help him move out, but there was something else being left unsaid. Of course, neither of them were inexperienced enough to need words. Not when they were swapping those terrible looks of piqued interest that asked such a simple yet difficult question. Roxas' only problem with the entire suddenly presented situation was that they were sober. He wasn't sure how much he could take when not inebriated. The concept was daunting.

"Hey." Axel let the word roll off his tongue with a refined smoothness that easily washed over Roxas like a sudden intake of nerve pills.

Roxas wasn't surprised when they began walking back toward the mattress. Axel was guiding him in that way that left him thankful because this was not a situation he wanted to be in control of. That being said, Roxas' lips had somewhat quirked into a wary smirk that dissolved into a quick laugh. He couldn't continue their eye contact, and right when he was about to say something his jaw simply rolled and his smile grew sly.

"Hey," which was all Roxas could return.

"I know this kid, right?" Axel began before reaching out for Roxas' hipbones. "Well, he's not really a kid, but he's sort of on the in between."

"Kind of sad that you're hanging out with kids."

"Shut your sassy fucking mouth and go with me here," he laughed. "But this kid; he's peculiar, sort of a grade A snob, and his humor is about as dry as the aftermath of menopause."

Roxas suddenly laughed again. "Now is a shitty time to be a jackass."

"It's a part of the charm, I promise." That was when Axel brought up a hand to cup the side of Roxas' face. "But he has these freckles, and when he's not paying attention he gets surprisingly enthusiastic about the simplest things. He doesn't directly say it, but he lights up and talks my ear off about it, and I like that about him a lot. He's also the snarkiest little brat on the face of the planet, but somehow seems to unendingly give me a run for my money. A total bank robber, you see. Ruthless and perfect for it, and he doesn't even realize there's nothing about him someone couldn't want in its entirety."

"Who the hell are you going on about?"

Axel's face was getting surprisingly close to Roxas' and the heat between them had spiked considerably. He knew this moment couldn't be real because he couldn't be half as lucky. Someone like Axel Diamond did not invest himself into a bratty teenage boy with nothing to give back to the world.

"Someday I hope you can tell me."

Those words would have butchered him had Axel's lips not firmly pressed against his directly after they were spoken. Before this moment he had watched a multitude of other people kiss Axel and he had always reciprocated so nonchalantly. That was the thing, though. Axel had never gone into the kisses with intentions of springing forward, but this was different. No one had initiated anything except Axel, and that was why there was a severe lack of ferocity. The moment was surprisingly gentle whether or not the hints of yearning were bubbling beneath their skin like murky tar. Roxas knew they had both been stifling the need to fuck and be fucked up until this point, and he could only think of the letter of thanks he owed Axel for waiting.

Again, Axel could do no wrong, and this perfection leaked down to the way he kissed with sincerity. Lips worked against lips, and he waited on Roxas to part his own because that was the thing with Axel—waiting, waiting, and waiting. He could've waited on Roxas for the rest of his life, and there was something about that reality that had Roxas gripping at his biceps and awkwardly tugging him the rest of the way toward the bed. Moving his belongings could wait. That horrible task could wait because he knew he would never have this chance again once all of his secrets were laid out on the table; spread leg and whorish. Just once he wanted something for himself. Just once he wanted to feel good, too. The pain between them was pent up. Roxas didn't want to say goodbye, but his time with Axel wasn't real; here was his adieu.

They hit the mattress with a rough landing, but Axel managed to regain the smoothness by giving Roxas enough space beneath him to scoot backward until he was flat on his back without his legs dangling over the side. There was the hushed exchange of quick laughing that was finally broken by Roxas' retrieval for his lips. His fingers were soon fisting brilliant locks of red. All was followed by the shameless fumbling around for each other's clothing because this had turned into a game of hot lava where anything but skin on skin was scorching. He knew he was going to die if Axel didn't hurry up and realize he had been waiting on this moment for longer than either of them. He wanted to feel better than he ever had on any high, and Roxas was more than okay with investing his current happiness in another human being. This would only happen once, anyway. Only once was okay no matter how miserable he would be afterward.

"Condom, lube," Axel murmured those two defining words against the patch of skin beneath Roxas' ear in between the kind of attentiveness bound to leave behind celestial bruises.

The groan of annoyance on Roxas' part left Axel chuckling, but Roxas didn't protest as he clumsily reached behind his head for the nightstand where the feelings jar glimmered. A couple of swear words intermingled with his weighted breathing because he couldn't catch the handle. Growing frustrated, Axel finally crawled over him and began digging through the drawer with a quick hand. That was the split-second when Roxas glanced down between them and tried to remember when they had shucked off practically all of each other's clothing; seriously, where had they gone? He knew better than to stare for too long because his ears were already warm from the hungry kissing, and he was two seconds away from growing doe eyed all because they were going through with this—_finally_.

Of course, that reality didn't completely sink in until the bottle of lube and packaged condom dropped down beside his head and Axel had tugged off his shirt while he leaned back on his heels. Roxas had no choice but to get a good look, which was why he propped himself up onto his elbows and took the initiative to give the ginger a total stare down that was anything but critical. Admiration was a better word, and Axel must not have expected Roxas to do anything but take a couple seconds to gawk: the noise he made when Roxas spat in his hand and directly wrapped his fingers around his shaft was not composed. His groan was guttural and thick with gravel. Everything the blond had expected and more, but it was still so foreign on his ears that his only response was to outright shudder. Within seconds his arms were covered in goose bumps and Axel was practically bucking into his fisted hand without any kind of reservation.

This was a privilege. If there was one thing he knew, then Axel was more than just selective. He loved to love, but he only loved those deemed worthy; and that knowledge was more than enough for him to finally let Axel go and lay back with an expectant look. Axel caught the hint, murmured something about promising foreplay next time, and went straight for the condom before Roxas could offer to put it on for him. One ripping of foil and the familiar click of the lube being opened later and Roxas was on the brink of a religious experience because Axel was knuckle deep inside of him. He'd had sex so many times before; none of these sensations were directly new to him. But when Axel crooked his fingers Roxas arched his back in the kind of way that had the hand above his head slam against the mattress, and he made the most undignified noise.

"_Axel_," and the way he said his name was a defined warning.

By then the man was on his knees leaned between Roxas' shaking thighs. His tongue and teeth were grazing along protruding hipbones while he continued with the fingering Roxas was clearly fed up with. He absolutely refused to come right then and there because not only would he die from embarrassment, but then he wouldn't get what he wanted. Roxas didn't ask for a lot, but he was on the brink of pleading for Axel to hurry up. He was going to waste away if something didn't happen soon, and this was not how he'd wanted to die.

"Mmn—what?" Axel didn't glance up, and it was then Roxas realized he was doing this on purpose. It was why he outright refused to touch the blond anywhere else but the occasional smoothing over his upper thigh. In turn, Roxas sought out his own form of defiance by attempting to reach down to touch himself. The only fruit bearing from that act was the sting of Axel's sharp slap against his hand.

Roxas actually laughed more out of disbelief than anything else. "This is _not_ happening right now."

"It's more fun when you're not rushing it." Was the murmured reply, but Roxas could hear his smile.

"It's more fun when I'm not kicking your ass _for_—" Roxas nearly stumbled over his words because Axel had found that spot again and made his point of not giving a single fuck about Roxas' opinion by jabbing. "Oh my fucking God, you're a sleaze _bag_!"

"Make that noise again."

"What _noise_—" Another jab, and another sharp intake of breath.

Axel eventually grew bored enough with his own game, and it wasn't long before Roxas found himself anchored onto his back with nothing but endless profanity leaking from his lips. His head was thrown back and the older man's expertise was soon the only driving weight behind each hard hitting gasp. Overly careful, Axel had used enough lube to make the entire moment one of the least painful experiences of his life, but that moment when he first pushed himself inside resonated with Roxas over and over again because he had wanted this. He had wanted it to the point that he was desperately clinging to Axel's shoulders with biting fingernails and only the sharp creaking of a mattress to even out his and the redhead's thick panting. Axel was surprisingly loud even if what pulled from his throat was nothing but a combination of flinty grunts and unmistakable groans, and Roxas would've been lying had he said that wasn't more enjoyable than the act itself.

When Axel began hitting his edge all he had to utter was the simplest sentence, "C'mon, Roxas, come for me."

It wasn't immediate, but the huskiness in his tone shot the kind of warmth through him that forced his navel to dip while the rest of his body was pricked by invisible needles. Roxas quickly dragged the tip of his tongue along his upper lips, dried from the harsh breathing, and within seconds there was the familiar tightening where his balls were taut and he wasn't going to last. This must've been a relief to Axel because the kind of finalizing groan on his part was accompanied by a fatigued laugh as he tightened his grips on the underneath Roxas' thighs and finished them both off with a couple of mercilessly hard thrusts.

"Holy fuck—" That was it for Axel, and with tensed muscles that seemed to force him into rigidity he finally reached between them and unevenly stroked Roxas until Roxas cried out his name. There was another set of tightening muscles, but this time around Axel who was yet to pull out. The man made a quick noise of discomfort because he was still incredibly sensitive, but that vanished when Roxas' defined abdomen was soon covered in thick strings of spunk.

When Axel dragged his tongue through it, Roxas' fingers went straight for the man's hair and he continued to stare up at the ceiling. Not only was he suffering from post-coital stupidity, but he couldn't believe his life was any form of reality. Not then. Any other time then it would have been obvious, but Axel Diamond was currently licking up his cum and his brain was fried. Roxas was just waiting for the sludge to start running from his ears and onto the sweat dampened comforter. He couldn't believe he was about to give it all up. Everything about them was too good to last, and he was going to destroy it before it could destroy him.

They laid around and smoked through half of Axel's cigarettes without once thinking about putting their clothes back on. No one—not even the cleaning lady—was around that day, so neither of them felt the unending obligation to be anything but nude. The overall tone between them was fatigued, and he was more than thankful that there hadn't been some sudden switch in atmosphere where Axel felt the need to pepper him with obnoxious kissing because Roxas knew they were both so above that. Whether or not this was romance it didn't matter. They had spent the entirety of their relationship up to this point feigning ignorance to what was and wasn't platonic, and he liked believing they would continue to do so. Sex meant nothing. Sex was going to continue to be everything but the foundation of their friendship.

"What did you need to move?" Axel sleepily asked with an arm beneath his head.

He could've napped, but instead muttered, "Oh, god damn."

"That's always reassuring."

Roxas finally rolled away from him and began putting his clothes back on, which was Axel's cue to do the same. Once they were somewhat dressed, Roxas smoothed his fingers through his own tangled mess of hair only to walk away from Axel who was still leisurely sitting on his bed. He looked like a lazy cat expectantly whirling his tail about, somewhat bored, and completely unprepared for what Roxas was about to show him. Then was when the greatest crash of self-loathing managed to manifest itself and hurdle against him.

"Look—we don't have to talk anymore after this." Roxas managed that much. "I just didn't know anyone else who wouldn't tell my parents."

That caught Axel's attention, and he dropped the relaxed act. His next words were extremely cautious. "Roxas, what do you mean?"

He didn't know how to explain himself, which was why he decided the only thing he could do was show Axel outright. Before he even opened his closet door there was that rare sting of his eyes brimming with tears. He was a screw up, and he knew all of this was disgusting. He was disgusting, but he was glad Axel had gotten a moment with him when he believed otherwise. _Never again—it'll never happen again_. The only way he could suppress his need to outright sob was by biting the inside of his cheek while reaching around for the first layer of Ziploc baggies. All of them were lined up so perfectly because the conciseness not only made room for more, but kept them from busting or leaking. The thought of that mess alone made his guts roil.

The first bag was set out behind him, and then another and another until there was a small pile of vomit filled one gallon freezer bags behind him. There were so many more that Roxas suddenly realized even he was completely overwhelmed by the mess he had made, and he eventually had to back away because the shame was eating him alive. As much as he had wanted Axel's help, he suddenly wanted the man to just walk out on him right then. He needed to be alone again. He didn't want to put anyone through his own fuck ups, and this wasn't fair. Roxas felt like some sickened lecher who had lured Axel into his fuckery by spreading his legs.

"Motherfuck—" Axel was suddenly standing behind Roxas, and before Roxas could pull out another bag he had looped his arms beneath the blond's armpits and dragged him away from the biohazard. "Where else do you have these hidden, Roxas? Tell me right fucking now."

His tone was frighteningly calm, but it was the only reason Roxas complied. Within seconds he was on his knees dragging out suitcase after suitcase full of the bags, and after Axel managed to get the basic understanding that the underneath of the bed was by far the worst area, Roxas headed toward the dresser drawers. The bottom two drawers were also full, and then the lockable drawer to his desk also held several bags of fermenting vomit. Long ago Roxas had learned that continuous puking in pipes meant stomach acid could erode the piping. He couldn't continue upchucking his self-hatred down his toilet without a plumber finding out, so he had turned to puking in bags. It had started out innocently enough. He'd puke in one, take it downstairs to the garbage, and pretend it never happened. That was back when it hadn't been as frequent. He couldn't even remember that time in his life anymore, and that realization had him sitting on the floor by his desk with his face in his hands.

When all of Roxas' hiding places were revealed, Axel said nothing. Instead, he stood there and took a moment to process the kind of disaster he had walked in on. Comprehending what was before him was seemingly impossible, which Axel figured was for the best because otherwise he might have strode directly out of Roxas' bedroom and never looked back. Though, he stood there and simply watched Roxas who had morphed into the child he undeniably was. Roxas was the abandoned baby on the doorstep, and no one had given him a lick of attention. Axel walking out then would've been a defining moment in Roxas' life, and he couldn't be that person.

Suddenly, he pulled Roxas to his feet with a distressed earnestness. "_Why_ didn't you fucking tell me?"

Roxas was red-eyed and clearly miserable when he pushed his fingers through his hair. He couldn't speak in fear of slipping up on his words, so he signed. "_I don't know_!"

"Don't sign at me, Roxas!" Axel's temper was rising, which caused Roxas to shut down more. "I could've helped you before it turned into _this_!"

Roxas ripped his elbow out of Axel's grip before turning to finally yell back. "Are you fucking stupid? This was already like _this_ before we ever met!"

"I mean—" Axel strode away from him because they needed the space. "I knew we were both kind of fucked up. I definitely knew you were, but I was waiting for you to at least tell me about it, and not like this!"

The words 'fucked up' struck a chord, and Roxas found himself angrily swiping up tears. "Oh, fuck you, Axel. Sorry for not being Mr. Perfect Axel Diamond and not eloquently explaining myself with a shit ton of redundant flowery prose! Sorry for being a little fucking human unlike _you_! Not everyone can spew out bullshit like a god damn biology text book! But_ thank you_ for reminding me that I'm fucked up! Because you know—the couple hundred bags of vomit aren't a good enough reminder!"

"Don't pull that fucking perfect card on me, _Eames_."

"It's Roxas!" And he was on the brink of bringing back a fist. "I am in no way an Eames, so fuck off with that, _Diamond_."

"Then lay off on trying to refer to me as something fucking flawless! If I was flawless I wouldn't still be standing here with you!"

"Good point! Why're you even here still?"

Axel finally lowered his voice. "Because I'm okay with _fucked up_ if you'll stop building a wall between us and let me help you."

Roxas finally lowered his voice, too, but he was panting and sniffing back snot. "Why do you want to help me?"

"The same reason I just fucked you." Axel's weak smile was followed by a laugh of disbelief. He paused, glanced around the room, and then looked back to Roxas. "Give me your gate key. I have an idea. I'll be right back."

Reluctantly, Roxas tossed him his key ring with the community key, watched Axel leave, and realized he was suddenly completely alone. Incapable of remaining in his room that was so brazenly wide-open, he meandered downstairs for the refrigerator to grab a bottle of water. There he waited in the breakfast nook and watched as his neighbors' gardeners slaved away in their front yards while the sun began to melt into the horizon. He waited for what felt like an eternity when really it was no more than thirty minutes before Axel returned with approximately five Rubbermaid totes and lids.

"We're going to pack all of it away and dump it in a dumpster behind the college. They'll think it was a bunch of the sororities." Axel momentarily stopped on the stairs to glance over at Roxas who was carting two of the empty crates. "Are you okay?"

Roxas gifted him with a look of utter complete misery, and Axel took that as an answer before continuing upstairs with him. Not once did Axel say anything about how vile the task at hand was. Instead, he wordlessly packed away bag after bag of sloshing, rotting vomit and only stopped once when Roxas found himself hanging over the toilet on the brink of vomiting.

"I'm just upset," and that was all he managed to get out before vomiting up bile. There was nothing in his system to puke up. "I'm sorry. I'm not doing this on purpose."

"I believe you," Axel said simply before ruffling Roxas' hair and going back to storing away what was left of the bags. "We're almost done, anyway."

They finished up directly before the cook was scheduled to arrive; with a sun already gone, Axel and Roxas rushed to shove tote after tote into the KIA. The entire process was finished within an hour, and after Roxas gave himself five minutes to thoroughly brush his gums raw they silently left his subdivision and headed toward the designated dumpster. During this car drive, Axel had found it in him to reach out and grab Roxas' hand who was listlessly staring out the car window. Both of them were incapable of speaking to one another, but there was a strange reassurance brought on by the physical contact. Roxas wished he had never involved Axel solely because he had never expected the man to stick around. He hadn't predicted this.

Even though Roxas offered to help, Axel wouldn't let him when it came to dumping the totes. He was too short anyway, and Axel figured it was quicker to just do it on his own. That being said, Roxas still abandoned the car for the muggy August air because this was his burden and not Axel's. He didn't care how good of a person Axel was trying to be, he needed to face his own demons even if Axel felt the need to hold his hand throughout all of them. It was only right, and it was high time Roxas started doing something right.

"That's all of them," Axel said with a final huff as the tote dropped onto ancient garbage. "You're in the clear."

Roxas just let out a hushed sigh. "I appreciate your help with this. You really didn't have to."

"We had a deal." Even in the dark Roxas could see that glimmering smile. "I got to be the big spoon and all."

He could only shrug at that as Axel approached him, and he was surprised when Axel brought his hands to the underside of his jawline and kissed his forehead. There was a pained note to that gesture.

"You'll be okay."

Roxas could feel his voice breaking. "Are we still friends?"

"Best friends, Roxas."


	9. Fairy Dust

_I Can't Make You Love Me/Nick of Time_

_Bon Iver_

* * *

_**Chapter Nine: Fairy Dust**_

"We're on Mount Gay Rum," Xigbar announced as he watched Roxas feed his frosted coke glass another slosh of coconut flavored booze.

Demyx was the first to cackle. "More like Mount Gay Bum."

Roxas parted his lips, gave Demyx a look implying he was the biggest dingus he had ever had the misfortune of seeing before handing the white bottle to Axel. The redhead took a swig straight from the container before handing it off to Demyx who was still maniacally laughing at his own joke. Roxas rolled his eyes as he took a sip and set aside his glass. From there he flopped onto his back and stared up at the ceiling fan that was whirling around in that mundane tempo he kept up with as if it were a mind-numbing melody. His lips were cracked and dry like the fissure before an earthquake, and there was the flooring beneath his spine with a crashing heartbeat beneath. He hadn't smoked anything or popped that afternoon, so he wasn't sure where the hypersensitivity derived from. Not that it mattered much. He was in a safe place.

"Upstairs," Axel said, and it was more of a demand as he peeled himself off the carpet.

Roxas lethargically raised his hands above his face and made a grabbing motion with his fingers. "I'm too weak for this shit."

Axel latched onto his hands with an eye roll and effortlessly tugged him onto his feet. There were a couple seconds of unbalanced stepping from where the redhead had underestimated his strength, but Axel kept Roxas from fumbling onto his ass by letting him land against his chest.

Xigbar audibly murmured something about the proclivity of their united homosexuality.

When they were alone in the bedroom there was a quiet moment where they had the opportunity to talk, but neither of them said anything. It was a painful drawl of silence because it was the first time they'd been alone since Axel had dropped him off after dumping the totes. On the tip of his tongue was a desperate ballad like Queens' _Somebody To Love _or a tearful Celine Dion song he didn't want to consider naming because then he'd be conscious about the fact he knew a Celine Dion song. His chest was pent up with a weighted sensation he could only see himself properly venting by kicking his foot through drywall while simultaneously ripping out strand after strand of sun kissed locks. There were riffs trilling in his skull, his throat was searing with the want to screech, and someone needed to toss him into a pool of water by a fallen electrical line. This was neurotic, but if Axel was causing it, then he knew he wanted to both persevere and take the first train out of dodge. He was split in two and organs were dropping onto the carpet with defining splats. He would never get the stains up.

"This atmosphere has me walking on baby sea turtles."

That jolting statement made Roxas talk. "Did you want to do something?"

He hated how the invitation sounded more like poor insinuation for a fuck.

"Actually, kiddo, I can't tonight." Axel stood up from his bed with a cigarette in hand. He pushed open his closet door and began rummaging through his selection of clothing with an arched eyebrow. "I've agreed to go gallivanting with Kairi tonight. I think she wants to rekindle some of that magic, and what can I say? I wasn't the one who ended it. There's sort of this unfinished business between us, and really-humans are fickle."

_Oh._

He sat there in momentary cold silence and took in what he'd heard with a furrowed brow. After a spell of Axel rustling through articles of clothing, he spoke up. "I probably need to go organize my things at the new place anyway. Hayner won't shut up about it."

_I should've known._

"Word—moving is stressful, and _Hayner_…"

Being subtle was of utmost importance in that moment. He stood up, snatched his wallet off the dingy flooring and murmured a goodbye to Axel that was thickly half-hearted. From there he abandoned the house for his Mercedes—disregarding Demyx's buzzed goodbye that was more complex than Shakespearean lingo. _He_ wasn't buzzed anymore, which was a blessing in disguise. Roxas had never been an emotional driver, but in that moment he tore out of Axel's front yard with grass eating tires and allowed himself to gun it because he was choking on something that refused to physically manifest. He wasn't going to vomit up what was forcing the acid in his stomach to curdle. For once he was faced with something he couldn't purge.

Above him was a collage of stars dying; when he pulled his car onto a graveled rode he only half remembered from some distant time ago, he killed the ignition, extracted his key and left it on the passenger seat. If there was someone who had the nerve to steal his Mercedes, then so be it. The piece of machinery was nothing but an obnoxious statement piece he had contemplated driving off the nearest bluff because it only further engrained whatever mocking label the town had seared into his image. His flesh was for the people's taking. When they helped themselves to his reputation they didn't leave behind an ounce of meat for him to salvage. Roxas was finding that precipice he had been thrown onto as a child that let him know he would never own himself. This was not the life he wanted, and no one cared. What he needed was to choose a direction because there wasn't a soul willing to hold his hand unless it meant bettering their own image.

Black boots crunched over pebbles as he strode down a beaten path. There was the churning of rapids in the distance, and Roxas could still remember the cleanliness of sharp autumn air sucking into his lungs. That memory was distant, but the words spoken that day were sour on his tongue. They had never gone away nor had the snarky exchange held between him and Axel Diamond. In the distance there was the silhouette of an iron bridge with its wooden planks for a creaky platform bedazzled with rocks, and Roxas could only push his fingers through his hair when the rustling of soon-to-fall leaves melted against him like warm wind. He didn't know why he was there, and he wasn't sure why he had ever gone there the very first time. Just as he had nearly a year ago, he was working on a strictly intuitive form of thought that was as freeing as it was frightening.

When he took that first step onto the bridge the air stilled and every sense of remembrance dispersed like kicked up dust fragments. Staring straight ahead, he continued is meandering without missing a beat; only reaching out his hand to drag it across the grainy reddened bar nearly rusted through by years of elemental exposure. He recalled being nervous for someone he didn't know, and that human disposition made him wonder if somewhere deep down under the mold there was a fragment of hope. It was distant, but Roxas speculated he wanted to love and be loved without even knowing where to begin. There wasn't an instruction pamphlet hidden behind his clavicles, but there was frustration—so much acrid frustration.

It didn't take long for him to pull his palm across his forehead. He hadn't expected anything. Roxas never got his hopes up, but he couldn't understand why there were suddenly tears springing to his eyes and trailing down cheeks reddened by the kind of anger he hadn't even been aware of. Blood was boiling and there was an ache in his gums where he was withholding every scream that reverberated inside his chest. When he parted his lips a noise softly crackled. Despair hooked into his lungs and punctured them until he wondered if he couldn't breathe, but he finally managed to rid himself of the blockade. He gasped hard and the sniffle accompanying it dissolved into a wail of despair because he hated himself for fathoming any sort of possibility. He didn't know Axel, and Roxas realized he had gone from lying to the world to lying to himself. No longer could he pretend he knew who he was, and the only response he could succumb to was a nice punch to the elderly railing beside him.

The next cry was from stark pain, and he loathed knowing he was real. He had no control over his life beyond what he could purge into bags, and he had forgone that private piece of him because he thought _maybe_ someone would understand. There were no words to encompass the misery that was Roxas coming to terms with the fact he had taken a misstep. For a handful of twinkling minutes with the kind of luminosity that had seemed so tangible Roxas had clung to another human being because he had believed there was potential. He had opened his heart and lied to the only person listening, and that was himself. There had been the silent prayer for connectivity to transmute because he thought he could have another human being, and Roxas had never had anyone before. No one had wanted him either.

"Fuck." He wept into his hand.

His ribcage had been thrown over the fence like a brittle tree branch. Winter would rot him away, and at that thought Roxas lurched himself toward the railing and leaned over until he could see where water frothed among rocks. He wanted to know what Axel Diamond had thought on that afternoon when he stared over this very spot. There were only caustic rotations of self-hatred encircling Roxas' heart and he needed to throw himself over with what meager upper body strength he possessed. His bones would shatter, and he would drown while swept up in the currents of calcium sticking through his skin and river water rushing down his trachea.

"Why can't I fucking kill myself?" And the screamed words echoed in the uninhibited wilderness surrounding him. He slammed his hands on top of the railing only to yank himself up with trembling arms. After less than careful maneuvering he was standing with his fingers tightly gripping a support beam that was weakened for its purpose. His next words were desperately whispered as tears sputtered off his lips. "What the fuck is wrong with me?"

His limbs were iced over, and no matter how high the urge welled up inside him—he couldn't do it. Roxas pressed his cheek against the bar he was hugging with one arm and clung to it like the friend he didn't have. Somewhere within he articulated to himself he was prepared to tell everything goodbye because there wasn't much in the first place. He tried to remember a time when he had understood love to its fullest extent. Roxas was in dire need of some semblance of hope to anchor into; his life wasn't worth the time for a stranger to take that unknowing step of fate onto a bridge. The blond with his baby blues more poignant than an Ella Fitzgerald song knew he would never be beautiful or charming or enrapture the hearts of total strangers. When a higher power had devised his existence it had been a lovely afterthought. He wasn't complete.

Roxas tilted his head back and stared up at the moon as if it were supposed to give him celestial guidance with its pale emotionless face cratered by years of experience he would never know. There were only grasshoppers chirping when another quiet gust of summer air played with his cowlick, and through all this he only had his thoughts. That was all, and Roxas realized that as long as he had those he would have to live on with the itch. When those shattered and he could no longer comprehend the world around him, then he would find the bridge again and take the only thing he truly owned. This would be his place, and he was no longer afraid of the inevitable. He was certain there would be no one to save him, and it was comfortable.

He stepped off and hit the rock dusted planks with a crunch. Breath filtered between his rows of teeth and he looked out over the water and asked himself if this was okay. His eyes were wide, and they absorbed the light filtering through nighttime. People misconceived night as the equivalent to pitch blackness, but he had clarity in that moment that drilled through his skull like a lobotomy. Suddenly, fatigue hit him like bricks. He wanted to go to sleep in a bed that he could call his own and decompose into the mattress like a forgotten person hibernating in a woodland home. A biohazard team would scrape him off his bed sheets after months of deterioration, and Roxas only wished death was that simple.

* * *

Olette found him lying on his back beside the pool a couple weeks before the beginning of term, and when she leaned over his form Roxas scowled at the sudden lack of sun her shadow brought. He had relinquished his desire to forever possess alabaster skin and succumbed to the inevitable collection of freckles across his nose. Tanned and speckled like the egg he had once found outside Naminé's peaceful homestead, Roxas was becoming one with the world by renouncing general human interaction and deep breathing the scent of chlorine from the pool in his backyard. He had hidden his phone in his desk's lockable drawer and refrained from leaving his home because then his father wouldn't have a reason to bitch him into a coma. There had been a sudden need to eat only salads, which hadn't done his body mass many favors, and he had rolled more joints in the past handful of days than he had in the entirety of his life. Not even the insistent waking and baking could curb his lack of an appetite. There was a comfortable listlessness he refused to identify as mourning when really he was mourning his life.

"Pence and Hayner said you weren't returning their calls."

Roxas snorted and rolled over onto his side.

"Roxas," she crouched down beside him, "can I be honest?"

Bitter laughter trickled from the back of his throat. "Is that a real choice?"

"Not really." Olette suddenly sat down beside him, and Roxas didn't budge when she began to comb her fingers through his greasy hair. "People are beginning to talk. They think you're on a bunch of drugs and that you're running with the wrong crowd. All you do is hangout with Uptown kids, and Hayner thinks you hate him."

Roxas groaned in disbelief before laughing again, exhausted. "God damn—fuck all of you. I can't fucking stand any of you. Who cares where I go or what I do?"

Her hand snapped back as if he had slapped her.

When she spoke he could practically hear the tremor in her bottom lip. "Your _friends_, Roxas."

Olette left him on the side of the pool, and Roxas was certain he had left himself on that bridge. His brain was churned butter, and the only thing he was proficient at was writing a to-do list for his father's assistant because he knew he was spoiled. He'd be damned before he ordered his own books for schooling he honestly had never given an iota of a fuck about. Roxas woke up every afternoon, considered completing his move into the townhouse Hayner had long since rushed to call his own, and instead rolled over onto his side and watched the drawer his phone was secured inside as if it would open on its own.

Sometimes he found it in himself to masturbate thinking about how much he wanted to come on Axel's face. His toes curled, his breathing pained lips that had long since split with a bloodied crack, and the surge of endorphins only ended on the note of disgust where he listlessly wiped sticky cum off his fingertips and onto the comforter before falling back asleep. His bones ached in a way that-when anyone even attempted to approach his bedroom-he groaned into the mattress and fought back tears. He didn't want to do anything but remain still because otherwise the entirety of his body surged with nerve shredding glitches that forced him to curl up within himself. Only sometimes he wished there was someone there to fuck him senseless because then maybe he would have a reason to move not just physically but internally.

"Roxas Eames!"

It was a rainy Saturday morning when his mother's foreign voice echoed throughout his bedroom. His eyes reluctantly peeled open, and his bedroom stank of mildewing sex, forgotten vodka bottles and cigarettes. He heard his name a second time followed by the repetitive beating of a palm against the door. Assuming she would go away, he tugged a blanket over his head and had to wonder if he had just accidentally Dutch oven-ed himself. The smell beneath the comforter was foul in the kind of way that brought on a quick cough. He couldn't handle more than five seconds before he finally came up for air that was only slightly less stale.

"You better be decent because I'm opening this door." It was locked. "_Roxas_!"

He exhaled a noise of disgust before finally rolling out of bed. After somehow scrounging up the energy to tug on jeans, he unlocked the handle and opened it so he could greet his mother with an arched eyebrow. Since his father had grown impressively invested in his secretary they had stopped having family dinners. It was then Roxas realized he couldn't recall the last time he had seen his mother let alone spoken to her. From how tight her face was it was evident she had just gotten her Botox injections. All Roxas could do was silently give her an expectant look. The bottle blonde was about to blow a gasket, but upon seeing him she seemed to knock herself down a couple notches. She had never had it in her to directly yell at Roxas.

"Honey, Daddy wants you to turn your phone back on."

Roxas began rubbing the crust out of the corner of his eyes. "Okay, Mom."

"Do you need anything?" The state of him was unsettling for her, and all he could think was _good_. "You've been cooped up for over a week. Maybe you should call one of your friends and go do something."

"I planned on going out tonight." Which was a lie, but he subconsciously auto-responded to appease her.

"Good! Very good, and I meant to tell you that you look nice with a tan. The cook left you one of your salads in the refrigerator, and you need to make a meal list for her."

With a parting kiss on his forehead she turned to leave, and Roxas could only shut his door and stare at it for a second before heading over to his desk to finally take out his phone. From sitting around in his desk on silent it had died. While he let it charge Roxas showered and scrubbed away a week's worth of caked on filth. There was only so much cologne and deodorant could do after a while, and he was surprised when he realized he had somehow managed to sprout apparent facial hair during his fleeting hibernation. There were a handful of things he couldn't do, and not bending to his mother's whim was one of them. Somehow his father was easier to disregard even though he was a powerhouse in more than one way.

Once clean with towel dried hair, Roxas plopped down in front of his desk and turned his phone back on. There was the frustratingly long wait for it to power on, and he was beginning to consider the possibility of downgrading his plan because his smartphone was not worth the aggravation. Eventually, though, the screen beeped on, and he sighed as twenty or more text messages flooded in from a multitude of people. There had been the predictable ones from Pence, Olette, Hayner and the couple of people he considered dealers, but then there was the muddled combination of texts from Demyx, Axel and even Kairi. Roxas stared at his phone for a split-second and wondered if there was a reason for him to read any of them, but curiosity got the best of him. After all he was only human.

Demyx's texts were repetitive invitations to hangout. Kairi's single text was inquiring about whether or not he wanted to go hard at laser tag that weekend, but when his eyes fell on the ones from Axel he could only let out a weak noise that caught in his throat. It didn't help that they fell into an order where instead of crescendoing with agitation it did the opposite. The full force of his annoyance was the first thing his eyes scanned through, and he could only eat away at his scabbed bottom lip.

"_I don't even know what I fucking did to you_."

"_Are you on an everlasting journey through your bog of self-loathing? Because I think you got a little stuck_."

"_Don't worry me, kiddo._"

"_Xion wants to see you this Saturday_."

"_We're overloaded with herb and cannot tackle this militia without you_."

"_Sunshine_."

He took the information in only to push away from his desk and stride toward his closet. One fitted set of clothes later and he was brushing his fingers through his hair because if there was one message that resonated from that bunch, then it was the one pertaining to Xion. He could dwell on how he was processing the situation he hadn't even begun to reflect on once he drank some coffee and had another long standing moment to himself. Xion struck a very important chord within him, and he could place his explanation-less problem with Axel on the back burner long enough to sit in front of her and have a decent conversation.

Roxas snatched up his keys, pocketed his phone and was out the door within a matter of minutes. He hadn't been inside his car since the ride home from the bridge, and driving had a strange foreign feel. Shaking off his own discomfort, Roxas eventually found himself parked in front of the hospital, and he was in search of that trademark KIA Soul that really was so subtly obnoxious to him. He couldn't place what he both liked and despised about the vehicle, but there was a strange concoction that bubbled over whenever he rode in it. After several seconds of searching, he finally found it and his nerves were set off like napalm. That meant Axel was inside, and he wished he had handled himself more eloquently because being asked what was wrong wasn't something he was capable of responding to. Mainly because he genuinely didn't know. The thought of attempting to explain himself was like dragging nails down a chalkboard.

With his coffee still in hand he strode through the automatic doors and attempted to remember the route he and Axel had taken through the halls only fabled to be sterile. Pungent sickness blanketed his skin like waxy residue. On his way he wondered if he would have to fight with a nurse about seeing Xion once he made his way toward the pediatric cancer wing. In front of white doors that securely swung shut was a desk, and when he approached the check in center the woman was popping gum and scrawling on a clipboard with a less than enthused edge. Not that Roxas could honestly blame her for looking unbelievably gloomy. Her job description was verifying whether or not loved ones could visit dying children, and the bluntness of that reality was the only reason he was able to summon a half-smile when he asked if Roxas Eames was on the visitation list for Xion Diamond.

"Axel mentioned you," she said, almost suspiciously.

Roxas could only imagine what that meant, but he refrained from getting inquisitive and strolled away with an arched eyebrow. He vaguely recalled the cheery décor casting out the shadowy truth of the location, and though he was certain he was on the right track beyond the white doors, he suddenly paused. There was a slate of cork hanging on the wall framed by obnoxious strips of sunshine yellow, and on this slate were stapled in pieces of artwork by the young patients. Finger paintings, which seemed juvenile even for someone thirteen years old, but the longer Roxas stood there and examined them the longer something echoed within him. There was one hand print specifically that caught his eye, and it was doused in silver glitter. Roxas wasn't surprised when he saw a neat signature with an enthusiastic swirl at the end of the finalizing letter: Xion Diamond.

Axel's short laughter struck when he approached Xion's door, but he didn't have a chance to knock against the jamb to warn him because Xion's deer eyes locked onto him first. She was on her knees so fast Roxas only had the chance to smile brightly at her and watch her hands work incredibly fast. There was no chance to acknowledge the fact Axel had turned around in his seat completely with an expression veering in the direction of surprised. Had Roxas seen it, then he wouldn't have blamed the redhead. He was not going to be the person to deny he was an honorary flake.

"_Axel said you weren't able to come_."

Roxas rolled his eyes and gave her a knowing look before setting aside his cup. For a split-second he had to think, but he finally managed to summon back the lessons Axel had put him through. There was electricity coursing through the tips of his fingers as he realized he was going to be able to communicate with her without Axel's constant assistance. "_He was wrong. How are you_?"

"_Really good! Axel and I are talking about the kind of - I want._"

There was a word Roxas couldn't decipher, and when he gave her an amused yet confused expression before questionably mimicking her signing for that single thing, Axel whistled for Roxas' attention.

"Wigs," he said simply.

Roxas made a point to nod in intrigued understanding before finally stepping away to grab a chair and swing it over beside Axel. "_What kind do you want_?"

"_Blue but like my hair_." She began to playfully fluff her own pixie cut before resuming. "_I like my hair, but I want a lot of colors_."

"_Any other colors for sure_?"

Xion thoughtfully pursed her lips and squinted past Roxas. She suddenly laughed, and her laughter was surprisingly exuberant. Roxas had never heard something as sweet before, and he wasn't even aware of how he was outright smiling at her. "_Purple and green_."

He playfully arched an eyebrow. "_Together_?"

"_Yes_!" And she gave him faux-attitude, moving her head side to side like a cobra. "_Got a problem with that_?"

Roxas laughed. "_Not at all_."

Suddenly, Axel spoke up and his tone was on the brink of monotone. "I didn't think you'd care enough to be here."

It was obvious Xion was attempting to read their lips, so Roxas turned his head and forced himself to face Axel. Then was when he realized the man had trimmed his sideburns down to where they looked purposeful and like artful accessories of facial hair. Well-groomed made them even more fitting, and Roxas had to wonder if he intended on keeping them. If he recalled correctly, then the bet was long over, but there they were still on his face and almost possessing a familiar and permanent edge. Roxas could hardly remember Axel without them the longer he thought on it, and he didn't mind. They were a strong piece of their evolving relationship together, and after a fleeting set of gawking seconds, he reeled himself in enough to respond.

"Your sister is a spectacular human being."

Simple as that, and he turned back to Xion who was glaring at them both. Roxas apologized and continued with their previous conversation. From wigs they managed to trickle down into her favorite foods and how much she hated the nurse that brought in her daily meals. Roxas wasn't very surprised when she began listing off her favorite candies—most of which Axel had to translate, and as the list continued the mirth in her brother's voice escalated. The real surprise was when Roxas inquired about the one food on earth she could eat for the rest of her life because most thirteen year olds weren't going to give her answer.

"_Sushi_!"

There was a lazy relaxed edge to their visit near the end where she asked him about his family and was devastated to discover he had no siblings. She simply would _die_ without Axel in her life, and Xion proceeded to do a dramatic exhale before cupping her cheeks at the thought. It was then that Roxas had a difficult time not looking toward Axel for some form of immediate explanation for himself. There was Xion with her innocent eyes gleaming with admiration for Axel, and there the two men sat knowing only too well that there had been a devastatingly close call for her. More than once Axel had stared over a body of water and contemplated his own demise. There was something so tragic to the concept that Roxas had to stand up to retrieve his coffee because his eyes had grown wetter than he expected. He had only visited Xion twice, but there was something about the thought of her losing Axel that made his bottom lip tremble. He didn't know them, and he didn't understand why he ached.

When he said his goodbye to Xion she was clearly forlorn, but he reached out and tweaked her nose with a smile before finally signing. "_I'll come back whenever you want_."

To that she responded with a bright smile. "_Always_."

Roxas nodded and mimicked her. "_Always_."

There was a clean line of awkwardness between Axel and Roxas as they parted from her hospital room, and Roxas knew it wouldn't be him to break the silence. He wasn't even sure how to formulate thoughts around Axel right about then, and it was a replay of the first time they'd met. There was so much internal blundering that he hadn't even realized Axel had spoken until the automatic doors were in their line of vision.

"I _said_—" and there was nothing more off-putting than Axel when he was irritated. "She wants the wigs because she's starting chemotherapy. We thought she was on the brink of complete remission, but her medications suddenly cancelled out. I'm just glad my parents have excellent health insurance for her."

The sentence was the dullest structure of information Axel had ever given Roxas. There was nothing flowery about the way he progressed through his sentences, and had Roxas not known better, then Axel's typically olive complexion blessed by an overexposure to the sun seemed ashen. That consistent light within him had dimmed significantly, and it was then Roxas noted there was something embedded in that sentence. As easily as he had said it Axel was agonizing internally and Roxas could sense it in his sacked demeanor and inability to even feign a smile for himself. Once Xion had vanished so had the need to accommodate anything.

"When did you find that out?" Roxas wasn't sure how else to approach the situation but casually. Making a dramatic scene was bound to only intensify Axel's seemingly unbalanced sense of self.

"Her doctor pulled me aside today."

Roxas had to directly ask. "It's not…"

The bitterness in the way he scoffed at Roxas' inability to say the word made the blond flinch. "_Terminal_—no, it's not terminal, but I feel like anytime we get closer to beating this she falls back closer to the big scare."

When they were standing in the parking lot Roxas realized Axel's jaw had fallen tight, and he was cutting his gaze downward. The blond parted his lips in surprise when the man's eyes grew moist, and he knew Axel was scared. He was scared for Xion's incredibly young life, and Roxas had to wonder if there was any implemented guilt for wanting to end his life when she valued him so much. From two visits alone Roxas could see how Axel was the sunshine in her world the way he was the sunshine in so many others. It was then he stopped them both because Axel was silently suffering. There were so many ways he himself could agonize, but when it was Axel he himself found his emotional reserve concaving. It was why he grasped onto the man's wrist and gave him a look pleading for some kind of emphasis on himself. Not Xion's condition but _him_.

"Did you want to talk about it?"

Never in his life had he expected to hear those words from his mouth because humans weren't allowed to express themselves. Not in his world. Not where his mother was as dense and cut as a diamond and his father wasn't around beyond the weekly critique. That being said, he decided the foreign concept was beyond warranted as they stood there with the overcast threatening to shed droplets over them both. Roxas was juvenile enough to romanticize the concept of the world crying because there was Axel Diamond with a hand over his eyes like a makeshift visor. For a second Axel sniffled back with a soft laugh as if mocking himself, but Roxas watched as that laugh dissolved into clenched teeth.

"She's just a baby, you know?" Axel stood there for a span of time only to suddenly crouch down and lean his back against a maroon van settled in the handicap parking spot. He was concealing his face with both hands, and Roxas didn't have it in him to acknowledge that this moment was in a public place where people were meandering by. "I want her to go to high school and have a normal life with normal friends. I want her to go on dates so I can judge any of the little pricks that try to go near her and make fun of them with Dad. I want her to go to college and become something fucking incredible because she's _so_ smart. She's the smartest thirteen year old I've ever met, and she wants to get married and have a real family with a good husband and four kids. Fuck—I just want her to go to Disneyland. She's a _little girl_, and I know she sometimes wonders if she's going to live to the end of the year. What thirteen year old should have to dwell on her mortality while all her old friends are out getting their first kisses and awkwardly holding hands while watching PG-13 comedies that are cinematic travesties?"

Without realizing it, Roxas' had knelt down in front of him. "Axel…"

"I want to see her travel and have a good life. She deserves a good life." The tears were streaming from underneath his hands. "She's deaf and she's been fighting cancer since the moment she could walk. Her mother fucking burned her with cigarettes as a baby, Roxas, and she was molested by some sick son of a bitch that tried to call himself her father in the court room. She was young. She wasn't fucking ten years old like me and can remember every sick thing people did to her. She has this beautiful chance to be normal just because she doesn't _remember_." By then Roxas had firmly grasped onto Axel's wrists. "There is no fucking God because if there was one it would give that baby a god damn break. I would cut my own throat if it meant she would get a break."

Roxas' hands smoothed up and his knees were soon planted on either side of Axel's thighs. Pulling down the man's hands that were quivering from a combination of grief and rage, he looked down at Axel who wouldn't give him eye contact to save his life. His eyes were blood shot, the entirety of his face was splotched by red and there was a streak of snot just above his upper lip. Not thinking twice, Roxas swiped up aforementioned mess the best he could with bare hands and wordlessly brought the others face into his chest. He gripped at the back of his hair, and when Axel brought his arms around his waist and clenched at the fabric of his shirt he wondered if he had finally done something somewhat right for someone else.

"No matter what she'll be okay because she has you."

"It's not that simple, Roxas. I want it to be, but I promise." His voice broke. "It's not."


	10. Grownups

_**Chapter 10: Grownups **_

Roxas wanted to believe there wasn't a reason for him to be the way he was. When so many around him had never experienced an iota of the indulgence he had there couldn't be cause for him to be submerged in himself. Not selfishly submerged but helplessly, and he had begun to realize that no matter how many times he pinky promised himself he would get over his life's slump it didn't matter because his entire existence was a slump. He couldn't reach into himself deep enough to cleanse what had calcified along his organs. His emotional stability was like dried cement on fabric, and he was stagnating.

"I'm so worthless."

"Don't sell yourself short. On the human trafficking market you'd go for an impressive sum."

Axel Diamond's life was a religious experience. Roxas wasn't capable of arguing against that, but when he found himself naked in a steamy bathroom that was currently a makeshift sauna he had to wonder if he was taking that too literally. What had started as a suffocation metaphor to describe his life had been spun into a deep breathing joke by Axel. Within five minutes of Axel inhaling and exhaling as if his water had broken they'd stripped down with towels and blasted the shower's hot water setting. One cloud of steam later and Roxas was seated on the floor wishing they had hot boxed instead.

There was a pregnant pause before Axel spoke. "Do you need help moving tomorrow?"

"Yeah, help by offing me on the doorstep of my townhouse."

"You know—maybe you should do some more deep breathing instead of talking right now."

If Roxas had to spend another straight minute thinking about living with Hayner then he would chew off his own tongue. He didn't need any help moving when his dad had a company on call along with a half a dozen helping hands prepared to sort through his tubs of junk. After boxing up his more personal belongings and allowing others to shove the less private items into cardboard Roxas realized he didn't have all that much. He wasn't complaining, but he wondered what it would take for him to morph into a wealth driven man like his father. He hoped that was a comfortable place to be because his dad's head was full of static and that seemed peaceful in comparison to the garbage he collected in his head.

Roxas didn't live with Axel, but he was around him enough to pick up on a few things. Those things being the way Axel sat at the kitchen table with his elbow propped up, lips pressed against the heel of his palm and face half-masked by his hand. The redhead did this during mornings after they fucked and he drank his coffee straight and rarely—if ever—wore a shirt. His muscles rippled beneath skin when he exhaled, and with his own cup of coffee in hand, Roxas wanted to ask what Axel was thinking about. Summer was coming to a close and he continuously saw the mirage of Axel Diamond fading with the obligations of life. He wouldn't have called it a 'summer of love,' but he had sung those Sublime lyrics enough times beside Axel to think he might have gotten a tip of the tongue taste. Axel was Scarlet Begonias, and Roxas wondered when he had gotten so embarrassingly poetic. It was true, though, and he was scared of never seeing Axel again.

He moved in with Hayner the next morning after crawling out of Axel's bed. A week later he started classes as did Axel, and three weeks later he was waking up on Naminé's couch with his face buried into a green and yellow spotted decorative pillow. College wasn't a terrifying transition. Not that it wasn't stressful but he was only pinky deep into the mess of academics and most of his friends from high school were attending the same school so he didn't have to concern himself with ever being apparently alone. It was all about appearances because no matter how many faces he saw that asked him out to coffee, to share a joint, to hit up upperclassmen parties he was still isolated. _It makes sense_, he promised himself. _You make sense._

"Hung over?" Naminé's voice smiled, gleamed, glistened and she was a gem.

"I haven't been drinking," but he paused. "Not lately."

They went for a walk after that, and Roxas took off his shoes and buried his toes in the sand. He saw the world for a split-second. It was no longer monochrome but the fleeting color dashed back into a realm he couldn't catch to save his life. He was the child too short for the lightning bug, and when Naminé grasped onto his hand she squeezed until he clenched back with a tight jaw. They walked together without speaking, and when they returned to Naminé's apartment he sat down on the couch and watched CNN until he fell asleep.

* * *

There was a slate of glass between him and Axel. His fingers spread out against the smooth surface, and when he'd go visit Xion, Roxas could swear the sheet thinned. After exchanging a couple text messages with Axel the next morning Roxas took his time getting ready at Naminé's, but he still managed to make it to Xion's hospital wing during the allotted time. He was there with a cup of coffee in hand and a large box held beneath the other arm. When he set the coffee aside he didn't greet Axel. Xion was the first to grasp onto his attention because there was something about her that swept him up into a whirlwind of hope. Surrounding Xion were bottles upon bottles of glitter-filled jars, and Axel was tilting every single one of them when Roxas plopped down onto the edge of her bed. She had been crying, and before Roxas could ask she raised her hands.

"_I'm going to lose all of my hair_. _No one will think I'm pretty_."

Looking to Axel, there was a soft exhale as the final jar met with the windowsill. The only word he spoke was breathy, exhausted. "Chemotherapy."

Roxas turned back to Xion and kept his poker face. Sliding the box onto her lap, he did his best to smile at her. "_I brought you something_."

Her eyes were still glassy when she took the white box that seemed impossibly big on her lap. Roxas had a hard time believing someone could be so small at her age, but there she was swallowed up by her hospital bed draped with streamers and pieces of art stemmed from an adolescent mind dampened by the reality of death. The box's top popped open, and when Xion spotted the green and purple pixie cut wig she stared for a moment. Her eyes flickered to Roxas and she shoved the box aside so that she could wrap her thin arms around him. Roxas paused and there was a soft echo in his chest. Axel was leaned against the wall watching with an unreadable expression, and the blond shot him a sharp questioning stare that was reciprocated with Axel arching an eyebrow. He wasn't going to tell him how to handle the situation.

Hesitantly, Roxas wrapped his arms around the girl's shoulders. "When does she start?"

"The day after tomorrow."

"That soon—"

"It's a life."

* * *

_ "It's stage three."_

_ "What does that mean?"_

_ "It depends how she responds to chemotherapy."_

_ "Is she…"_

_ "No. Not yet."_

Roxas left his car in the parking lot and rode with Axel. The redhead was gripping the steering wheel and his knuckles were a bloodless white. Green eyes aglow with a silent rage stared at the road, and Roxas numbly grasped onto the arm rest. The sun was mockingly bright, and he wondered where the rain and car crashes were. At the same time, he had to wonder where the hope was. Axel hadn't even looked at Xion until he had to say goodbye, and though he was all smiles and that glaring sunshine he seemed to perpetually be, it shifted into an overcast sky-scape the moment they left the room. He was evidently shaken.

The blond swallowed, fidgeted and then rolled down the window to smoke. "How's school?"

"After four years of post-secondary education you sort of don't have much to say about it."

He paused, surprised. "You're not an undergraduate?"

"I'm working on my Masters. Don't fucking ask me why because I don't know either."

He had to admit he knew more about Axel's happy trail than his day-to-day existence. Had he ever considered it an issue? Not until then, and Roxas exhaled before dragging a hand along the back of his neck. If he knew why they spoke, then maybe he would be able to decipher where lines had and hadn't blurred. None of it mattered, though. Like so many others they would continue to grow distant, and it wasn't until then did Roxas consider the possibility that [**the**] end to their friendship could be decidedly painless. They knew next to nothing about one another for two people who'd seen each other in their darkest elements. It was one of the few times Roxas believed he had grown somewhat wiser in the relationship department.

His life was a booklet of conjunct haikus where he simplified his existence, but the longer he sat with Axel the more he began to consider the concept of self-importance. Where he sat, where he was; it was all relevant. What wouldAxel have done had Roxas not decided to go along with him to the undefined destination? Would he have pulled over and slammed his hands on the steering wheel and sobbed until his esophagus threatened to blister from heated rage? Would he have run away and said goodbye to his sister, family and Master's degree? Would he have taken a running leap off that exact same bridge they met on? Roxas didn't know the 'could have been' seething behind Axel's gritted teeth. What he _did_ know was that he was there and it had done something somehow. No one would do anything drastic. Axel had too much pride and Roxas didn't have the energy to play along with gusts of impulse. At least, that's what he told himself.

"I want to go for a swim," Axel said.

Roxas replied. "Then let's go."

The property they drove onto was the same acreage from the fundraiser he had gone to. He remembered fleetingly writing a couple hundred dollar check before stuffing it into a coffee can and leaving, and then the abundance of paint and peeling skin a week later, but what had stuck out the most was the abyss beneath his feet during hide and seek. The moon had casted an eerie glow and he had been lost in himself. Even then he wished it was night time because then he could see it again. It wasn't often he was mesmerized by nature no matter how big of a part of it he knew he played in the natural world. That was the reluctant biology major speaking, though.

Axel parked, and they stepped out into the Indian summer air. The sun baked them when they weren't in the shade of trees, but he didn't think much about anything except for the test he forgot to study for. Anytime Xion slipped back into his thoughts he blocked her little girl face from his mind and counted tree limbs. The sky was the color of seas he was yet to see in person, and the air seemed thicker than the makeshift sauna's. He glanced over at Axel who was peculiarly quiet, but after an endless trail of walking he began to recognize where they were headed. The cliff he had contemplated jumping off of. The cliff he had thrown his phone over.

"Will you jump with me?"

Roxas was startled as he watched Axel toss down his phone, yank of the silver chains he wore on his wrists and finally his shirt. At first, he thought Axel meant for them to jump to their deaths, and he hated himself for contemplating going along with it because two seconds later he realized that the jump was meant for a follow up swim. Roxas sucked in a quick breath, nodded and followed Axel's motions. Soon enough he was shirtless, and he had tossed down those white and black rings he had started wearing long ago. He wasn't sure why he wore them. He guessed he liked them enough. They were almost spiritual attachments at that point.

Suddenly Axel turned around and began walking backward in front of Roxas with a wolfish grin. That cocky demeanor had resurfaced and slowly bobbed around like a log on the river's murky surface.

"Let me show you what it's like to be with you."

"Are you mocking me?"

Axel dramatically pursed his lips, shook his head. "Nah—not now. Not right now."

Without warning Axel turned on his heel and took a running leap off the side of the bluff. Roxas sprinted to the edge where waves crashed and he could still see Axel free falling when he himself took that impulsive leap off. The tips of his toes left solid ground, and Roxas wasn't sure what the point of this was, but his organs seemed to lift toward his throat. He wasn't sure if he could breathe. That wasn't a bad thing, though. Because he was going to hit that icy water cooled by the cliff's shade and go under.

The impact shocked him to the point that he thought his lungs had dislodged, and every nerve exposed on his skin was met with a sting that rang through him as if his blood had frosted. A thousand bees swarmed him and Roxas drifted beneath the water at a lightning pace. He had to wonder if he was going to drown beneath the pacific calm where he was suddenly very alone. Roxas popped open his eyes and there was the sunlight peeking through the rippling top much like the time he drifted beneath the river, but then there was someone else. It was a boy, but the smaller framed person wasn't Axel. Roxas was certain he had seen him somewhere before.

A brunette with messy hair and blue eyes swam toward him, and it was then Roxas realized he was the waterlogged boy he had seen beneath Axel's bed, but this time he looked alive. His face was flushed and his nose was slightly crinkled as he smiled with blinding teeth. The fear that once bled into him wasn't existent as the male swam for him with an outreached arm. When Roxas realized he was letting the water rushing into his lungs overtake him, he reached up and his fingers firmly clasped onto the warm hand of a boy with eyes to match his own. The serenity of the moment had Roxas believing he could breathe beneath the pressure of the lake.

"You deserve, as much as I do, to be your own person."

Bubbles gurgled from Roxas' mouth. "Who are you?"

"_You_."

There was a firm recognition of the teenager before him, and with a swift tug from the brunette the distorted reflections of water around them shattered like stained glass. He was going to sink to the rocky bottom and die because there was no longer anything holding him up. At least, that was what he thought until there was a harsh tug on his shoulder and he resurfaced. The roar of the air bore into his eardrums and Roxas coughed and sputtered until his lungs began to burn and his red-rimmed eyes blurred from watering. Birds cawed, the wind blew against his damp body, and he couldn't think.

Axel was panting beside him on all fours. "See what I mean?"

Grappling at the rock beneath them, Roxas continued trying to breathe. In some abstract way he was finally beginning to understand what Axel meant, but during that split-second where he realized he was sinking and nothing was enabling him to swim a cold reality had dawned on him. Death had touched down on the tip of his nose with an affectionate kiss, and all he could do was think about how he didn't want it. He hadn't wanted to die.

* * *

Roxas went home with Axel. They swam to the shore and there were unconceivable moments when the rush to tug Axel down into something warm overwhelmed him. His hands were shaking and he continued chattering as they padded up the cliff toward their belongings and returned to Axel's car. One silent drive later they walked into Axel's house that was being prepped for one of Demyx's parties. Before the place grew too crowded Roxas let Axel fuck him with a vibrator until he was screaming. Xigbar tossed a shoe at the bedroom door. Axel told him to scream louder. He did.

They got a standing ovation when they walked down the carpeted steps.

"I was talking to my mom about bread and she was saying how it was hard on the outside and soft inside and I said, 'Like a forty year old man who never expressed himself,' and my mom went really quiet and murmured yes and started crying. Honestly, I'm worried."

That was Demyx. He was standing at the end of the steps, and as soon as he saw Roxas they exchanged high fives. Axel's hand work with Demyx was more complex, but he was almost certain the final motion to their elaborate handshake was 'motherfucker' in sign language. There were moments when Axel was impossibly mature for his age; brilliant even, but then he was very much his age. Roxas appreciated those moments. There was less of a divide between them, and he found common ground with the man.

"But there's this empty pool," Demyx started. "Abandoned…"

Roxas tuned in with a small lean toward Demyx. "Where?"

He waggled his eyebrows. "Why so interested, Roxas?"

"I—uh, used to skate."

That caught his mullet donning friend's attention. "_Used_ to?"

"Life happened."

Axel's arm drifted over Roxas' shoulder. "You're a continuous cycle of cell reproduction, but as you should know it takes the body seven to eight years to completely regenerate all of its cells. I'm pretty sure there are some of those skate tumors still sticking to your organs."

"I didn't know a human being's interests were compacted into cells," Roxas murmured.

"Things would be much easier if you played along with my extended metaphors."

"Coming from the person who almost killed me with one earlier."

Axel pressed his cheek against Roxas' temple. "Considering what you just let me do to your body I'm not going to believe you hold that against me. Plus, you almost dying just drives my point further."

Demyx made an exaggerated face of disgust. "_God_—you two are fucking repulsive."

Roxas ignored the mutual friend. His words were dry. "So, I make you want to die."

"You make me want to smoke a lot of meth."

"How much meth?"

"Bookoos."

"_Anyway_," Demyx drew out that word and gestured toward Roxas with his red cup of beer. "I've got an extra board. We could wreck that thing together if you wanted. We better do it now before I drink too much."

"I do not have the shoes for that shit."

"Don't be a fucking ninny. Afraid of ripping off a toenail?"

Roxas paused and momentarily parted his lips. "_Yeah_, actually."

"We're going."

That was good enough for Roxas. After telling Xigbar to hold down the fort, Roxas and Demyx sprinted shirtless out the front door and Axel followed them with his long stride. The air was still warm, and Roxas was dreading winter months destined to come because he wanted summer to keep trekking on. Had he known Demyx could skate then maybe he would've approached him about it earlier. Better late than never held strong especially when the three found themselves throwing boards over a wooden fence and tugging their bodies up afterward**,** Demyx and Roxas hitting the ground with thuds and Axel landing as if he had floated.

The drained pool created the outline of a plump eight. Roxas stared at the magnificent sight beside Demyx and set the board down at his feet. It had been two years since he'd last stepped onto the sandpapery surface, waxed edges with complacent determination and dug through his dad's garage for the proper tools to dislodge his deck. Once upon a time he had been absorbed in the sport, and as he had said, life happened. It had happened in waves of vomit and self-loathing. It was still happening, but maybe he could take a break. That thought was what got him to step onto the gripe tape.

"I won't laugh if you fall!" Demyx dropped in.

Roxas said nothing as he followed Demyx's lead and Axel stood at the edge with one arm across his chest and the other propped up on aforementioned arm. The raised hand held a cigarette and his stare was sharp. The entire walk there he had been quiet, and Roxas knew it was because they'd messed around again. The kind of importance Axel put behind their fucks was beleaguering. There were so many possible things Axel could be thinking, and it was to the point Roxas was too confused to make assumptions.

His wheels ate up the pool's smooth surface. Roxas took a couple minutes to get comfortable on the board again. For him it was the equivalent to riding a bike. Getting through his apprehension was harder than the actual skating, and he abruptly dreamt of returning to the skate park in town. The more he thought the greater his momentum became, and without comprehending his movements, he gripped the side of the pool and effortlessly brought himself into an upside lift that held like his breath. A single arm gripped his board while the other held him up and he gracefully swung back down into the pool. He kicked off and repeated his movements directly in front of Axel. While holding his body up the second time the pair met eyes. Roxas barely heard Axel speak.

"You make centrifugal force and rotational inertia pretty stunning."

Roxas laughed as he brought himself back down.

That moment at the pool was what drew Roxas into something new. He woke up the next morning, had Axel drive him to his car at the hospital, and waved goodbye before heading home. Roxas sped toward the townhouse where Hayner was still sleeping and proceeded to seek out the garbage bags beneath the sink. His hands blindly sought between cleaners that neither of them had bothered to use yet until he grasped onto that box of hefty bags. He was going to need them in abundance to do what he had to. This time, though, Roxas had no intentions of calling Axel. This was a personal project.

His bland bedroom was barely customized to reflect his own interests, but he decided to deal with that later. Roxas made a beeline for his closet. He yanked open the doors and stared at the selection before him with pursed lips and discontentment. The contents were designers he knew by heart simply because his friends did too. Minimalistic pieces not crafted for Roxas to wear properly and he had spent thousands having pieces tailored to fit his mediocre stature and simpleton legs. His face was nice, his abdominals were nicer, but they were there to make up for the vertical challenge he inherited from his tiny money-sucking mother.

Roxas yanked article after article of clothing off the hangers and stuffed them into the first garbage bag. He did this until there were four bags settled on his bedroom floor, and it took twice as long to gather up his shoes. The boots all looked the same, which left him wondering why the hell his parents had agreed to purchase them. Had they genuinely been paying attention, then they would've both realized he was practically buying the same exact shoe but with miniscule detail changes here and there. There was even one pair that was so identical to another that Roxas was embarrassed to realize they were in fact the exact same.

When he was done he stuffed the bags and boxes of shoes into his car and dropped them off at the local Goodwill. From there he cancelled his next hair appointment, headed toward the closest mall and decided this was it. He wasn't Roxas Eames the brooding teenager meant to inherit a Pandora's Box of misery. He was Roxas, and he was going to dress however he wanted because he was old enough to not give a fuck. He wasn't going to cut his hair unless he couldn't take it anymore, and if he wanted sideburns, then he was going to grow them out. He wasn't too sure about the facial hair, but seeing it on Axel enough made him think it was a possibility. Roxas had decided to take the first steps toward stripping himself down and rebuilding. Even if there wasn't an immediate fix to his interiors there definitely was one to his exterior. He had to start somewhere.

It took him an hour to become an Obey poster boy. He was snapbacks and hoodies with shoes that could grip, and with bags upon bags of clothing shoved into his backseat he took his final stop rather seriously. Roxas needed his own board because for him returning to that groove of life where he didn't have to think was the foreign solace he had been looking for. For once he identified with Naminé. He understood exactly why she was so engrossed in her painting and dreams and aspirations. They were a distraction from the real world. He needed less of the real world and a handful of dreams to make it through the rest of his life.

* * *

It was a day later when Roxas saw Hayner again due to their conflicting schedules, and at first he thought Roxas was joking. That is until he realized Roxas' humor spectrum was about as broad as Hitler's moral spectrum. He had stepped into Roxas' doorway with intentions of asking him about what pizza toppings he preferred, and there the blond was seated on his bedroom floor with a naked deck on his lap and an abundance of skateboarding parts he knew next to nothing about surrounding him. Roxas was sleeveless, his hair was disheveled, and in Hayner's uneducated opinion, he looked like he had finally broken and down and started dabbling in heroin.

"What the fuck kind of look is that?"

Roxas snapped his focus up from the skateboard he was in the midst of customizing. "Mine."

Hayner seemed taken aback by Roxas' attitude, but he laughed it off. "You look kind of rough, though."

"And you've looked the exact same since our freshman year of high school."

A stare off ensued. Roxas knew he was going to pay for that dearly. Later on there would be dick in his throat and he would be sucking on Hayner's sweaty balls while thinking about Axel and whether or not chemotherapy would pan out for Xion. He would let it happen, but he would be a despondent couch cushion that had to wonder why he told himself and others he was close to Hayner. For two people who connected their bodies in the most intimate way imaginable Roxas didn't believe they had any other linking. It was forced—quite literally—and not only that but fake. All of the relationships that had survived high school were just that: fake.

Before Hayner could condemn him to the worst anal sex of his life Roxas gathered up his belongings and hightailed it to Axel's house. He hadn't called ahead, which wasn't all that unusual for them. Roxas had gotten to the point that he was able to simply walk into Axel's house, but that night it was even less peculiar to do so because there were quite a few people wandering in and out of the tiny three bedroom house. He pulled up in his car, and when he stepped out he recalled the first night he had shown up to the haven with Hayner.

"Roxas Eames?"

The voice was thickly accented, and Roxas turned to see Kairi sitting on the hood of the KIA Soul beside Axel. There were a couple beers settled between them and Roxas waved before striding toward the pair. Immediately she was running her mouth a million miles per hour to the point that Roxas wasn't exactly sure if she was speaking English or German. Axel seemed to follow her without fail, but Roxas was quick to deliberate the possibility the redhead was only being his impeccably polite and charming self for the sake of feelings.

She grasped onto Roxas' shoulder. "You look great. I like you in color!"

"Thanks—" But he was cut off.

"Why're you here?" Had Axel not said it with such a sly implicative grin then Roxas might have been put off. Instantly they were looking at one another and Kairi was a fleeting memory. "Need to talk?"

Roxas narrowed his eyes at Axel for a moment before cautiously speaking. "Yeah, _talk_…"

"Kairi," Axel slung his arm around Kairi's shoulder and brought her close. "You see I have business to attend to of the professional sort—"

"Do not bullshit me, Diamond."

"We'll go out to lunch tomorrow, I promise."

Axel slid off the hood of his car and motioned for Roxas to follow him. There was a looming silence between them before the taller of the two decided to start talking again. He was doing his best to inquire about Roxas' wardrobe change without being too direct or appreciative for it. There was a fine line of insulting relief and complimenting when it came down to the matter. Roxas could tell he was struggling.

"I got sick of my old shit."

Axel jumped on the invitation. "Looks good, seamless choice, practically unadulterated and…"

"Look—as badly as I used to dress and as much as I want to hang out in your bedroom for the next hour there's something I need to tell you that I don't think I can tell anyone else."

That forced the redhead's rare almost inconceivable nervousness to drift. The two made their way up the stained steps and on toward his bedroom before Axel furrowed his brow. "What's going on?"

Roxas stepped into Axel's dimly lit room and waited for the man to follow. He shut the door behind them and leaned back against the wooden surface. "I need to tell you about Hayner."


	11. Wishing Stars

**_Chapter Eleven: Wishing Stars_**

_"I've been messing around with Hayner."_

_ "But you've reiterated your hate for him multiple times."_

_ "I know. I do hate him."_

_ "You know I kind of thought we were…"_

_ "Me too."_

_ "Right, then why do you fuck around with him?"_

_ "I don't choose to."_

_ "Roxas, listen to me. That's…"_

Roxas' story was about love. It was the love of grinding his frame on Kairi when he drank too much vodka and needed to involuntarily vomit. The love of Naminé reminding him that he was a human being like everyone else with a heart and veins and arteries that bled the same vibrant blood as those around him. The love of roaming through thick woods with strangers who always seemed ready to dance with their lit menthols and disregard for life's aches. They were lifted kids who had backgrounds of molten lava but before them were sown plains of green grass. No one had made life better without trying, and Roxas worked through those loves while coming to terms with the three most important types; romantic, platonic and self. Where he stood among those three was still a blur, but the longer he spilled his guts to Axel the clearer the first two became.

Xion began chemotherapy as soon as Axel said she would, but Roxas had class during her first round of treatment and Axel wouldn't discuss exactly what happened after Roxas stuttered over his questions. He went the second time and met Xion's oncologist along with Axel's parents. They were a cheerful pair of human beings that fell into the background while simultaneously paying Roxas no mind. Not that he considered their indifference insulting. Their young daughter was fighting for her life, and the longer he was around them the more he began to come to terms with the fact things weren't quite as uncertain as Axel had led him to believe. This wasn't just cerebrospinal injections bound to help her. This was a desperate war, and Roxas had never seen Axel as tired as he was until he saw him stare at Xion while she underwent her own personal hell.

What had once been every Saturday visits morphed into every other day and a sudden in depth lesson on the technicalities of chemotherapy. There was more than Roxas knew how to process, but he understood enough to know what which treatment required, what her medicines meant, and Roxas found it cruel how her oral medications were meant to cure the sicknesses chemotherapy implemented. He couldn't tell if she was genuinely getting better or if treatment was breaking her down faster. More than once he had stepped into the hospital room to see Axel sleeping on the bed beside Xion. She had grown partial to naps and her neediness for both Axel and Roxas had become all-consuming. If she wanted to see him he left in the middle of his lectures, tests and labs. When he wasn't in class or roaming the skate parks with Demyx, then he was sitting in a hospital chair watching her tell stories about the days before she was confined to a hospital.

"_When you get out we'll take you to the beach to go swimming_." Roxas always promised her she would leave. "_But I think the first thing we'll do is get you ice cream_."

Xion laughed and weakly moved her hands. "_Are you and my brother best friends_?"

Surprised, Roxas gave her a thoughtful look, smiling. "_Yes. I'm sure we are_."

"_Are you my best friend_?"

There was a surge of happiness that struck him, and he nodded. "_Of course I am_."

"_Good. Because I think you're my best friend, too_. _Just like my brother_."

"_But not as good of a best friend as your brother_."

Xion furrowed her brow. "_You're both perfect to me_."

Even though his methods had proven to be unconventional and even dangerous Roxas still saw Axel as the perfect one out of the two of them. He wished he was half as immaculate as both Axel and Xion Diamond because there was something there that had cut and polished the two. He had a feeling he would never understand it what it was, but maybe that was for the best. Beauty without pain just didn't seem possible for the pair, and he doubted he was strong enough to bear it all.

The autumn air was beginning to roll in when Roxas found himself walking along the row of trees for the cancer patients who hadn't made it. He read one name after another on their golden plaques, processed the ages of those who'd passed, and Roxas wondered if anyone made it through treatment. There were so many of those saplings in their neat rows with spindly branches. He wanted to know what happened when the hospital eventually ran out of room. Would someone be forgotten? Would there be a treeless life, a person who just didn't die in time and make the cut? The pondering continued as he did his best to swallow down the thought of seeing Xion's name. The clouds smoothed across the sky, leaves threatened to fall onto the sidewalk, and Roxas couldn't remember when he had started thinking more about death than dying.

He spotted Axel while taking the same path back to Xion's room. The redhead's hands were deep in his back pockets and he was doing exactly what Roxas had. Jade narrowed eyes swept along name after name, and his shoulders were faintly hunched as if he had turned into himself. Roxas stopped where he was and faintly laughed when Axel brought his hands out of his pockets in order to sign a greeting at him. Instead of rolling directly into spoken English Roxas placed the cigarette filter into the corner of his mouth and signed back a greeting.

"_Did she go to sleep_?"

Axel exhaled. "_I told her you'd be back to tell her goodbye, but yeah_."

"_Are you okay_?"

"_Perfect_."

Roxas blinked. Something forced the ground to ripple beneath him, and he looked at the man with eyes widened in disbelief. Axel had said something to shatter the glass he had dragged the tips of his fingers over multiple times. Little had Roxas known the glass wasn't just walls and ceiling but also flooring.

"_No you're not_."

"_You think so_?"

Axel dropped his hands and then dragged them through his hair. He looked away from Roxas, chewed on the inside of his cheek, and Roxas pushed the heel of his palm along his temple while gazing down at the sidewalk with a neutral expression. Facades and misconceptions took a moment to circle the drain, but the moment was hardly as painful as either one of them had expected it to be. The wind took a moment to gust between them, but it fell silent as if inviting one of them to speak. Neither took the opportunity, and Roxas wasn't sure what was wrong, but Axel was swallowing a lump he should've choked on. Axel's fatigue was as brilliant as his exuberance, but Roxas wondered if those deepening circles beneath his eyes, the subtle blood filled lines that speckled his lips from where he had gnawed, and hollow cheeks were the eventual results for people who played a role too long.

He was beginning to realize humans were frail and sensitive creatures even when they are aware. A man's little sister is dying from cancer so there's going to be inevitable sadness, but he's still surprised it devours him from the inside out. A man reluctantly has sex with another he would rather puke on than orgasm for so there's going to be precedent self-loathing, but he's still surprised it makes him want to rip his ribs out. Roxas wasn't sure what that meant or how to apply it to himself, but he had a feeling it simply meant he would never be prepared for life. Then again, who was prepared? At the end of the day maybe that was the point.

Roxas finally spoke. "I know so."

* * *

Roxas was the kind of human who wasn't allowed to have good things last. In the back of his mind he knew this to be true, but on a Sunday evening in the midst of midterms he was forced to come to terms with that truth.

The front door to Axel's house was perpetually unlocked. Rarely was someone not there, and even when there weren't cars someone had a knack for being inside. Whether it was a girlfriend sleeping the day away or a friend visiting, Roxas couldn't comprehend the concept of a person not being in the house. Not that any of that mattered because on this said Sunday Axel was home. Sometimes Roxas had to wonder what the hell the man actually did for a living. Demyx had called him a pusher, but that only brought in so much money without taking a huge risk. He continuously attempted to leave mental notes about asking about Axel's job, but they always ended up displaced during their conversations.

Fixing his snapback and sweeping his bangs until they were elegantly settled along his forehead, Roxas stepped out of his car and jogged straight for the door. He figured Axel was still asleep due to him not answering his text messages, and this wouldn't have been the first time he came over without direct invitation. Had Axel not absolutely hated Hayner with his entire being, then the house invading might have been mutual, but there was nothing relaxed about Roxas' townhouse. Plus, Roxas didn't want to think about all of the tension he would have to live through if Hayner and Axel saw each other. His skin crawled at the thought.

When he headed toward the stairs there was the sound of someone yelling upstairs, and he figured from the whining pitch it was Demyx getting backhanded by Xigbar for something along the lines of shaving his pubes with his razor again. That fight had ended with a black eye for Demyx, but the follow up was even better. Anytime Xigbar got a new razor Demyx left behind a nice couple of wiry blond hairs. Demyx refusing to let up eventually ended on the note of Xigbar hiding his new disposable razors and leaving behind the rusted ones. It wasn't long before Demyx raised his white flag and began buying his own for the sake of peace.

Roxas was wrong, though. The sound wasn't Demyx, and it in fact was a girl apparently being drilled within an inch of her life. Kairi, to be specific, and though Roxas sucked in a quiet breath to dissolve an assumption and sinking feeling, he decided there was always the chance someone else was home. Xigbar had been putting the sleaziest moves on Kairi imaginable, and he wouldn't have been surprised had she humored him for a go. There was something about the girl that was both empowering all while being heinously cute. Roxas wouldn't have wanted to get into a fight of wills. Even a physical one made him somewhat apprehensive. For someone so painfully thin she still had what Axel referred to as 'whispering muscles.'

Shamelessly, the blond had intended on eavesdropping outside Xigbar's door for a listen. He faintly remembered having sex with her, but that was so long ago for him and he had been drinking. She had been good, but that was only because he couldn't see anything and her chest was flatter than an Indiana cornfield. Kairi was also loud, and she hadn't been any quieter with him than she was with Xigbar. When he reached the stairs' landing Roxas realized something. Xigbar's bedroom was on one end of the upstairs hallway while Axel's was on the opposite side. It was why when Roxas got loud while Axel and he were fucking it was definitely pushing the limits of polite. Any thrown objects were justified on Xigbar's end, and Roxas didn't argue back.

Kairi's groaning that sounded like low-budget foreign pornographic film were coming from Axel's end of the hall. The breath he took ricocheted around his lungs like a bullet, and he fiddled with his hands for a moment before taking a couple steps toward Axel's bedroom door. His heart was pounding in his chest at the kind of pace that would've concerned him had he not been too shaken to notice. A shot of anger lit through him until the ends of his fingers began to tingle. Roxas was immediately propelled into the kind of emotional onset that made his fingers cramp because he was trying to fight back the need to ball them up into fists. All of this was punctuated by the moment when he heard Axel's laughter. His chest sank in and the only thing he could do was ask the world why. Had he tried to fight the natural workings of his life too hard? Roxas hadn't even started his life let alone believed he deserved the universe's backlash.

At first he paced. He listened to them fuck one another at the kind of ferocity that seemed so free and comfortable. Roxas wasn't comfortable with himself, but there Kairi was older and more experienced in adult sex. _No wonder_, but he didn't let himself react the childish way he wanted to. He could've walked out of that house, changed his number and deleted Axel from his life, but an impression needed to be left. Whether or not that impression was even more childish wasn't a concern to him. Roxas began striding toward Axel's bedroom door with his fists finally clenched and red pooling around him, clotting, twisting and finally choking his common sense.

His fingers wrapped around the door handle he had grasped onto so many times before, and he couldn't remember when walking through Axel's life without reservations had grown natural. The door was thrown open, and he only saw a couple seconds of Axel's naked hips snapping forward between Kairi's impossibly thin legs, but it was enough to strike a match. He was consumed by fire, and as his skin began to bubble and char the only thing he did was laugh. Yanking off his hat as Kairi began swearing in both English and fumbling through angry German, Roxas watched as she shoved Axel off of her and the redheaded man couldn't even look back at him. His hands were somewhat raised as if he was surrendering, and he was staring at that space on the mattress where Kairi had just fled. Neither of them looked at him, which made it worse. They knew they were in the wrong. Kairi and Axel had both addressed the fact Roxas was supposed to be something important.

Still laughing, Roxas yanked off his hat and slid a set of fingers through his hair. Kairi was quick to get dressed and announce she could walk back to her house, and had Roxas been a lesser person he would've tripped her as she shoved past him. Kairi didn't apologize. She didn't acknowledge him, and there was something brilliantly defining about that moment. He had liked her. He had once seen her as a fun and interesting person who made him smile with her chopped jokes and strange sweetness. Even then Roxas considered her a good person. He wasn't sure why he couldn't hate her, but he would never be able to look at her again. He would've rather abhorred her down to her bone marrow than feel the kind of loss right then. They had been friends. Roxas didn't have very many of those and he hadn't realized the value he put on them until she slammed the front door.

When he was done with his laughing, Roxas reached up and swiped his tears away. "Oh fuck."

Axel had finally lowered his hands, but he still faced the wall. "Roxas…"

"How about you just shut the fuck up?" Roxas' laughter sputtered out again, and those laugh induced tears finally dissolved into complete devastation where they leaked down in salty rivers. Giggling broke into choked up breathes where he had to talk himself out of hyperventilating, but he put his hat back on and gripped the doorframe with his chest heaving. Suddenly, he was gritting his teeth. The rage had his vision distorting and before he could stop himself he was yelling until he thought his vocal cords would shred. "I fucking trusted you!"

There was an enveloping silence that followed. "_Everything_—there was nothing else to tell. I've told you _everything_ about myself, and you acted like you cared. That's what you fucking are, Axel Diamond; an actor! Your last name is a fucking mockery of you because you're not perfect! You're the farthest thing from the bullshit you feed everyone! Even those who know what you are!"

Suddenly, Axel turned to give Roxas eye contact and the anger on the other man's face startled Roxas into shutting his mouth. It was Axel's turn. "I never said I was perfect! You and everyone else have this distorted concept of me as a human being, and this is what you get for make believing a pedestal. You fall the fuck off!"

"I've known you're not perfect. I've known you've been playing pretend for a long time and how you set other people up! I thought that was what made us what we were and—"

Axel stood up and easily slid into a pair of jeans. They hung low and he suddenly strode up to Roxas with a mocking tilt of the head and glowering expression. "What the fuck were we, Roxas?"

"I…"

"Because let me tell you something about relationships." He pointed a finger in Roxas' face, and Roxas exhaled to suppress his want to hit Axel in the jaw. "I fucking hate myself, and you—oh, baby, _you_—I've never met another person full of so many self-deprecating tendencies. You absolutely fucking hate yourself. So, what were we? Do you think you fucking _loved _me? Do you think _I_ loved you? It is utterly _impossible_ to love someone if you do not love yourself, and Roxas Eames, you cannot fucking stand your own existence. What makes you think you could stand mine in the long run? What makes you think I could stand _yours_? So don't look at me like I broke your heart because the last time I fucking checked neither of us have one to give. Not even ourselves."

The pause that followed was one of shaking irises that flickered across Axel's face as if he were reading text. Roxas' fingers had unclenched, and it was then he realized he had been lying to himself. Outside there were leaves morphing into waterfalls of sunrise oranges and sunset reds, but the seasons didn't change until Roxas gave Axel one final look and strode down the stairs.

* * *

He went home and shoved his fingers down his throat. He sputtered up pizza rolls, diet Coke, sour skittles and it wasn't until he was stuck on fruitless burps and saliva leaking down his scraped fingers did he pull back from the toilet and flush. There was a mirror above the sink he shaved in front of, and when he saw himself his eyes were bloodshot, but there weren't any broken blood vessels. If there hadn't been anything between them, then why was he tightening his jaw every chance he got to think? Roxas couldn't understand how he had been so wrong about everything. Technically, he had been right in the beginning, but after all the time spent with Axel he had a difficult time believing they had been a sham. Roxas acknowledged his own denial with a frustrated scream against his fisted knuckles. He bit down and kept screaming with his forehead pressed against the wall until he began to punch the drywall with quick repetitive strikes.

Eventually he calmed down and decided to go to bed early. Even though he had to study he couldn't force himself through another page of his disjointed note taking. Had he been able to predict the future and there was a class solely based on paying attention and taking notes, then he would've climbed mountains to get into it in high school. How he had sailed through high school with a GPA that qualified him for Ivy League was beyond him because he was barely passing anything he was taking. There were legitimate distractions, but some days he simply nudged at his stack of books until they fell off his desk and scattered. Afterward, he'd roll over and nap. When he woke up he would step over his mess twenty times before picking them up only to realize he had a quiz for his next class and it was suddenly one in the morning. It kept happening. He wasn't sure why.

The next morning Xion had another appointment with her oncologist, and Roxas had promised he would be there to visit. The sun was shrouded by autumn rain, and he spent a good hour with his face buried beneath a pillow and his eyes focused on his cellphone's glowing screen. He kept scrolling through his unanswered text messages, awaiting more and hoping for some kind of apology from Axel. In his dream world the redhead would apologize, tell him the stress from Xion's cancer was finally getting to him and then they would go see Xion together with intentions of talking it out. She would smile at them and believe they were perfect because when he was with her—when he saw just how happy he made her—those were the times when he knew he would never be closer to perfection. Making Xion grin through her fatigue and endless list of sicknesses genuinely made Roxas content with himself.

Rolling over onto his stomach, Roxas continued fiddling with his phone. Even when his vision blurred from the obnoxious bout of crying he was suddenly fighting he continued attempting to read through messages. Tear drops began dripping onto his phone and abruptly the screen went black. Blinking back anymore of the waterworks, he attempted to turned the phone back out. Roxas went as far as taking out the battery and trying to turn it on again, but the phone wouldn't relent. He had fried the piece of machinery with his tears, and how horribly stupid and embarrassing that was made him slam his face down into the mattress and scream. His insurance wasn't going to cover the damage of teenage boy's angst, and he was going to hear it from his dad when he saw the charge for another phone. The only semblance of a family he had was his cellphone's family data plan.

Defeated, he set the phone aside and decided there were boundaries he needed to be contemplate, but whether or not he got under Axel's skin by being present for Xion suddenly didn't matter to him. The girl had absolutely nothing to do with Axel and his problems, and he wasn't going to be the lesser person who backed out because that non-existent heart in his chest was fragmenting like a chunk of mica. It was why he got dressed, brushed his teeth, took a long look at the man staring back at him in that bathroom mirror and jostled his car keys. There was more to the world than just him and he was going to prove to himself he was at least right about that.

Roxas fleetingly acknowledged an eating Hayner at the breakfast bar with a wave as he strode through the garage door and it was then he realized he'd agreed to skate with Demyx later. There was a sudden satisfaction knowing he and Axel had mutual friends along with Xion because that meant there was no way Axel could easily dispose of Roxas. The only person who had a right to dispose of him was himself, and he' be damned before the redhead melted him into some kind of self-hatred ego trip where Axel could walk away believing he knew life's workings as if he'd live twenty lives.

His bout of contemplation had made him miss Xion's actual treatment, but he and still have time to visit. One of the jars of glitter was bright salmon while the other was mint green. He wondered what they'd look like combined, and he decided Xion would probably like the idea of combining them. She was sort of picky about color combinations, but Roxas thought he'd found a good pair for her. Not only that, but the challenge to meet her creative standard was slowly morphing into a light hearted game for himself.

Staring at the dead screen of his cellphone as he walked toward Xion's room with the bag swaying back and forth, his attention was drawn upward at the sound of that disjointed voice that was Xion's. Never before had he heard her cry, but as if on instinct, he knew it was her. Roxas shoved his phone into his back pocket as he made a beeline for the hospital room. There wasn't time to glance at Axel who was sitting on a chair beside her and rapidly signing. She wasn't looking at his hands because she was too busy staring at her own. With devastated wailing that was full of grief Xion stared at the black clumps of hair on her palms. She had been warned she would probably lose her hair, but as Roxas had learned, just because you knew didn't make it any less painful.

Seeing her shoulders shake forced Roxas to suck in a quick breath, and it was only then he looked at Axel. The eye contact didn't last long enough for Roxas to turn that emotional kindling into the potential flame within himself, and instead of asking about the obvious Roxas sat down on the bed and hurriedly scooped the pieces of hair out of her hands. It was a moment when he wanted to cry because nothing was fair, and she didn't deserve to ever think less of herself. Her self-image was important to her because she was young, and that was normal. It was okay for her to be concerned about her looks. Xion was someone Roxas looked at and knew would grow up into a knockout, and she didn't deserve to hate herself. She didn't deserve to become like her brother or himself. Had he been alone he would've screamed for her. He would've screamed and tried to burn the world down.

Roxas set the hair on her bedside stand and tapped her chin so she would look at him. "_You are beautiful_."

Her eyes were watery and she was shaking. It took a couple tries. "_You're just saying that_."

He had learned faces were important, and it was why he gave her a severe stare. "_I would never lie to you even if it meant hurting your feelings_._ You're beautiful and this is not forever_."

"_What if it is? What if I don't get better_? _What if I die ugly_?"

"_You will get better_."

Xion stared at him and took a moment to sniff. "_Do you promise_?"

"_No—promise yourself you will fight. Axel and I will fight with you as long as you promise yourself you won't let this defeat you before the battle really begins_."

She touched her hair again, pulled out a couple strands, and Roxas hadn't been aware of Axel's attention to his hands. He had made a point to process everything Roxas had said to her, but Axel's attention wasn't important anymore. What was important right then was making sure Xion understood this wasn't going to be easy and the loss of her hair wasn't going to be the ruin of her. Roxas wouldn't let her believe this was the beginning to some kind of ending. Nothing had been scarier for Roxas than her suddenly acknowledging her mortality.

Finally, she redirected her hands to speak. "_I promise_."

"_Now tell me you're beautiful_."

That made Xion squint at him, but suddenly she smiled. "_Weird_."

Roxas wasn't letting up. "_Do it_."

Reluctantly with a sigh, "_I'm beautiful_."

That satisfied Roxas enough for him to place the bag of things he bought on her lap. Xion had instantly calmed, and they spent the rest of Roxas' visit making feelings jar. Though she wasn't certain at first, Xion approved of the green and salmon colors being mixed together. After seeing it, the combination was suddenly her favorite jar, but after shaking the new bottle and letting the glitter settle a couple times she yawned and Roxas knew that was his cue to tell her he had studying to do. Xion was understanding even though evidently disappointed, but when it came down to it Roxas knew she needed just as much rest as soul lifting visits from her two favorite people. He decided the next time he visited he would bring her another wig.

The entire time he sat with Xion her brother refrained from speaking. If Xion had noticed she'd hid it well because usually he and Axel were decently communicative; flirty, even. Of course, the girl was impossibly observant and that went along with bouts of surprisingly intelligence. Roxas wouldn't have been surprised to find out she had definitely noticed the hushed tension but knew better than to start anything. It worried him. The last thing he wanted was for Xion to be uncomfortable, and Roxas liked to think Axel was on the same page as him. That being said, Roxas had learned it was better off not to assume things.

"_I'll see you in a few days_." Roxas patted the side of Xion's face and she reached out to pat his. For some reason, her mimicking his gesture made him quietly laugh.

"_Next time we'll talk about why you're sad_."

He stared at her for a long time before gripping her hand and giving it a momentary squeeze. "_I'm not sad_. _I'm really happy right now_. _You make everyone happy_."

"_Will you be happy when you leave this room_?"

Roxas exhaled from the back of his throat and the sound that followed was a raspy sigh. His smile didn't give up, though. Xion was about to make him cry, but he refused to let that happen in front of her. "_Very happy_."

There was something tremendously painful about lying to her. Before he walked out of the room he gave her a final hug that was a little tighter than usual. For being young she was so much wiser than him at times, and he wished he could stay with her longer to pick her brain. Then was an era where he had to focus on keeping her consistently happy, but at some point he wanted to know how she saw the world. Xion seemed like the person more than capable of telling him where all of the mysteries of life were, and Roxas suspected that just maybe Axel was wrong. Just maybe she could remember everything about her life before him and their parents, and though the thought was heart wrenching, he wouldn't have been surprised. She just knew too much.

Roxas waved goodbye and as he walked down the hallway he realized Axel hadn't said a word to him. He wished he was shocked, and he didn't know what he had been expecting, but Roxas was beginning to realize the only person he could expect anything from was himself.


End file.
